Our Victory Garden

This mess of weeds is what was staring at us early in the spring. If it looks bad in that picture, it only got worse as the weeks went on! As spring moved in, the weeds sprang to life. Thorns, bushes, and grasses were soon out of control in the space that was supposed to be our garden.

After an hour, I was only able to hand turn a little less than a square foot. Luckily, we have a very kind neighbor who loves to use his tractor.

It looked like Mothers Day Weekend was going to be the only nice weekend for a while, so we planted our seeds then, although there was still a chance of a last late frost.

Jonah's job was to push the seeds into the holes. He loved being a part of planting, at least for a little while (he does have the attention span of an almost three year old, after all!)

Luckily, the frosts were over, and our crop hasn't been effected by cold weather. It stayed cool enough to get our lettuce to sprout, but warm enough not to kill the other sproutlings. We planted corn, sunflowers, two kinds of peas, zucchini, yellow summer squash, pickling cucumbers, muncher cucumbers, sugar pie pumpkins, butternut squash, lettuce, spinach, beets, carrots, and broccoli. I'm hoping that this along with the half farm share we are getting will provide enough veggies to last through the season without buying any extra. If I'm lucky and nothing dies, I think we'll have enough for me to freeze and can! We also have a pear tree in the yard, and we planted three varieties of berry bushes. Given the amount of berries that my kids eat, I'm hoping that each bush was worth it's $20 investment. After last year, I now have a good guage of how much jelly and jam we use through the year. I made way too much last year even considering the amount that we used to barter with and give as gifts.

We have not planted our tomatoes and peppers yet. We are waiting until the weather gets a little nicer before going to buy already grown plants. The growing season here is too short to start tomato and pepper plants from seeds in the ground, it is much more lucrative to get plants that were grown early in the season, in a green house. I'm planning on getting some globe tomatoes, green peppers, and jalapeno peppers. We have yellow pear tomatoes growing in our garage.

I'm really hoping that I don't kill all of it. I am not exactly known for my green thumb, but I'm learning! The broccoli has already taken a turn for the worse, but this week, we found this in our row of corn, so it is encouraging!

Do you have a vegetable garden? What do you grow in it, and do you involve the kids in the garden chores?