As the true spring has finally made it's appearance, our thoughts have turned to gardening! Since the Seed Savers catalog arrived in February, we've been planning and dreaming of our future homestead garden. Just how much do we need to grow to feed a family of five for a year? With three growing boys... a lot! Of course, the first item on Luke's list was strawberries. Lots and lots of strawberries!
While our large homestead garden will have to remain a dream for one more season, we are having just as much fun planning our small, backyard garden here at home. Fresh spinach and herbs, squash, tomatoes, and snap peas... all our favorites and oh so easy to grow!
Just after the snow melted last week, Luke brought out the starter soil, pots and seeds. He planted Black Beauty Squash, Golden Zucchini, and Cilantro, remembering just what to do from the years before! Some of the other plants we'll have to pick up at the farmers market, since we didn't get an early enough start this year.
We also made some garden markers for each of the pots, instead of the ugly pieces of paper that we usually use. I wrote on some with a sharpie marker and some I wood burned. I love them, because they're cute and I'll be able to use them year after year! If you'd like a set, I've added them to the shop here.
What are you planting in the garden this year?
We are actually in much the same position as you are, we just bought land a little ways away, but most of our gardens will still be here for this season. Our planting list is always so so long, even if I try to keep it to basics... potatoes, carrots, beets, cabbage, onions, winter squashes.. (storage crops!).. summer squashes, zucchini, hopefully lots of tomatoes if we aren't too slow (which I am afraid we might be).. and then there's still greens!... kale, collards, swiss chard, spinach, lettuces... cilantro, basil (probably only in pots)... our strawberry bed is looking patchy. We dream of berry bushes and fruit trees! Probably we will plant a few beds to something at the land later this summer, but we need to mostly focus on the backyard here. And we were thinking of doing similar garden markers this year...
ReplyDeleteAlso, Hi :) I've never said much of a hello before. I'm enjoying hearing bits of your journey to and on your land, and look forward to reading more as you continue. (And I can't believe I am really going to leave this super long comment here!)
Renee