garden 2016 // the beginning

I can’t tell you how excited I am to be writing my first garden post of the year! We’re doing things a little differently this summer. The big change is a new half-size (4 ft x 4 ft) raised bed just for the little guy (you can see him working on building it with Papa, above). After reading in several sources about the value of having a “children’s garden,” I thought there must be some way we could make it happen for Zane. Our back yard is framed by massive, old oak trees which are beautiful and give us much-needed summer shade—the downside is that their umbrella of leaves covers the entirety of the plant-able space and limits our ability to grow sun-loving vegetables behind the house. So…side-yard it is, and the new box fits just fine. Zane would like to grow tomatoes, radishes, flowers, and…eggplants! He’s a funny little fellow.

My parents have a great setup for starting seeds indoors, and they graciously gifted us many tomato and kale seedlings to get us started. Zane chose a cherry tomato and a kale plant for his garden. We still have room for some additional plants, so we’ll be acquiring those this weekend. I’d really like to do zucchini this year (we skipped it last year and regretted it). I’d also like to do some pickling cucumbers. We did beets and carrots last year, but they take so.long.to.grow. I’d rather focus on something else this summer. We also didn’t bring back the pea teepee, since the peas did really poorly last year, and it’s already pretty late in the season for peas. I think I might still try to do some bush-type peas in one of the raised beds, just to see what happens.

The last change is swapping out the unwieldy (but effective) cat-deterring chicken wire for more convenient (but expensive) deer fencing, also donated by my parents—it’s what they have been using in their beds for the past couple of years and it seems to work. I think it’s a much safer solution, especially for the kids.

What are you planting this summer? I’d love to hear about your gardening adventures!