The Garden

We have a massively huge backyard.  And we decided we ought to try to use some of that space to plant a garden.  We are very inexperienced gardeners, and it has been quite the process to try and get one in!  It turns out they are a lot of work!!  We figure that this is a learning year, and even if nothing grows, we will know a little better what we're doing next year. :)  

We tried to start seeds in egg cartons indoors before we could plant outdoors.  All in all, a huge waste of time!  I was constantly moving the seeds from window to window, trying to have them get enough sun, and when it was time to plant there wasn't much more than 2 leaves on all of the plants.  I figured the tomatoes and peppers would never produce fruit at this rate, so I went and bought some plants from Home Depot.  I think we will do this from now on.  But the boys had fun planting at least.

We have all sorts of wildlife that love our backyard and an especially hungry groundhog that lives under our shed.  Our few attempts at some squash plants got totally eaten by him last year, and we decided that if we were going to have a garden we needed a fence.  A friend from the ward let us come over and gave us some tips!  We decided to start small and made two raised beds this year and then just rototilled up a longer patch of ground in the back.  Originally we were going to have the fence be a little shorter and have some of the fencing lay flat on the ground (to dissuade the groundhog), but it seemed to hard and we just tried it this way this year.  We have not come up with a good "gate" solution.  Any ideas??  We are just opening and closing the wire on the corner post right now...and it seems to work ok. Not sure if that will be a good idea for the whole summer or not.

We planted beans, peas, and squash from seed.

I'm not sure how well spaced they are. :)

But that's ok.  The boys loved helping.

And then we planted some of the plants in the raised beds. 

And that is that!  We'll see if we get anything this year.  It has been a lot of work, a lot of learning, and a lot of fun so far!