2016 Spring Garden

Square foot garden

We are hobby gardeners. By hobby, I mean, we really enjoy gardening but don't produce enough to feed our family throughout the year and spend more on gardening than it would cost to purchase organic food from the store. However, it's a great learning experience and we're learning as a family how to grow things organically. As part of our homeschooling, I decided that this year, we will weigh what we harvest. This way we can keep track of how much food we're producing and get an idea of how our garden is growing and feeding our family. I'm not including the cost of seeds since most of them we either saved or bought in the past. Not to mention, seeds are pretty cheap. I also didn't include the cost of soil or any gardening supplies. My goal is to grow 25 lbs this year. At the end of the year, we'll compare the cost of organic food from the store with the cost of organic food we've grown in our garden. In the future I hope to add more details about our garden such as how long each crop took to grow, the total cost involved, and how much time daily we spent watering the garden and taking care of it. But to start, weighing the crops is enough. I was excited to finally justify the cost of a kitchen scale.

We harvested our first crops a few weeks ago and some more earlier this week. So far, we have harvested carrots and onions and are just over 4.5 lbs. If our pumpkins, cantaloupes, and watermelon grow, we might make our goal before the Fall harvest. We have harvested some kale but I didn't weigh it. We should be getting some tomatoes as well. Our tomato plant is a great example of how my husband planted an organic tomato that we got from the store, in a pot of soil. The seeds have grown and produced lovely tomato plants that have been very fruitful the past few years. 

This year, we added a two barrel compost. That along with the compost tube from our Garden Tower should really help our soil naturally. Here are some pictures of our garden. I'll start with some pictures of my family, since I know that's what my family enjoys seeing the most. Scroll down and you'll see pictures of our garden and gardening supplies. We're growing a lot of things. The Garden Tower mostly has herbs, strawberries, and greens. The square foot has pumpkins, onions, cantaloupes, peas, and potatoes. Our tomato plant is in the pot in front of our square foot. Depending on how this year goes, we may expand our garden next year. We'd love eventually become more self sufficient. On a side note, we have not had to run our sprinklers this Spring yet. Thankfully we've gotten some good rain and we've been able to use the rain from our rain barrels to water our garden, which is the best kind of water to use. Plants love rain water.  

My four loves!

This cute baby loves helping in the garden!

Three carrots we harvested.

Her first carrot to harvest.

Yum!

Harvested onions

Our cute wild bunny that lives in our yard.

Pitcher plant, to hopefully help catch all the fruit flies in our kitchen.

One of several really long onions

Such great helpers!

Compost barrels

Rain barrels

Garden Tower, filled with herbs, strawberries, and greens.

Mosquito repelling plants

Several herbs

Where we just pulled some carrots and onions.  Don't worry, new seeds have been planted.

We had to pull the kale from our Garden Tower but don't worry, there's more growing here.

Our Fall Garden

Our Fall garden is growing great! We have an abundance of kale and leafy greens. We have lots of tomatoes too and a pretty cabbage. We lost our peach tree due to the excessive rain we got last Spring but God provides. We have a new tree that started growing last Spring and looks healthy and strong. We are planning to pull up the peach tree and plant our new tree in its place.

Princess is at the perfect age for learning so many things. She's super smart and knows most of her colors and is enjoying learning about the plants in our garden and bugs. She loves helping Daddy water our garden. In the mornings she looks out our window during breakfast to see if our wild bunnies are in the yard. Most of the time they are! The other day I had a fun project for her. She got to play with some Fall window decals of different color leaves and other Fall things. We talked about the colors and pictures as she pointed to the same colors in our backyard. We even saw a bumble bee get nectar from our pickling cucumber plant. 

Our lovely tower garden, filled with lettuce, greens, spinach, and herbs.

Mostly kale on this side

If you look closely, you can see the bee on the flower.

Pretty girl

Cabbage plant

I love our Red Oak in the Fall

Tomatoes, spinach, peas, onions, and other random things growing

Banana tree

Tree that starting growing

Pickling Cucumbers!

We have gotten a lot of rain this year and our garden is loving it! This past weekend my husband and Blue Rock harvested lots of cucumbers from our garden. We're hoping to make pickles with them. 

A yellow cucumber! It got a little too ripe!

Texas Spring Backyard Garden

We enjoy gardening and growing organic foods in our backyard. Most of Spring, Summer, and Fall, we do not have to buy any greens. We just go to our backyard and harvest what we need. One day we hope to grow most of the food we eat. We drink lots of smoothies and juice periodically so this saves us quite a bit. Not to mention our salads are delicious! There is nothing better than farm to table.

In April we planted our Spring/Summer garden. It is growing great! This year we are growing lots of different fruits, vegetables, and herbs. Two years ago, we bought a Garden Tower, which is perfect for greens, herbs, strawberries, and tomatoes. We also have a square foot garden and a few containers. 

In the awesome tower, we are growing three kinds of lettuce, two kinds of spinach, and one kind of kale. We also have lots of herbs, strawberries, onions, and tomatoes. In the past we have grown broccoli and Chinese cabbage. In the square foot garden we have onions, peppers, garlic, three kinds of peas, okra, tomatoes, two kinds of poblano peppers, cucumbers, garlic, and two kinds of carrots. We decided not to grow any beets although those grow really well in our area too. Our blueberry bush is fully of little blueberries. There are lots of peaches on our peach tree. Our generous neighbor gave our son a banana tree so we're hoping it produces some bananas, although we don't necessarily live in the right climate but you never know. We have catnip and marigold to ward off mosquitoes and they have worked really well for us. We're hoping to add another square foot garden to grow some various melons and later in July plant some pumpkin seeds. For now, here are some pictures of our little backyard city garden. 

Garden Tower

Lettuce, spinach, and kale

More of our salad greens

White Princess Peach Tree

Blueberry bush, we're hoping to plant it in the ground after this season

Tomatoes and mosquito repealing plants

Square foot garden

Mosquito repelling plant

Banana Tree