Adventures in Gardening

Last year our gardening effort was touch and go. Travis lovingly tended to his sweet and hot pepper plants, but pretty much everything else was an epic fail. We barely even reaped potatoes, which are essentially the easiest things to grow, ever. So this year we decided to do it right. We bought a Big Yellow Bag of black garden soil in March with the save $20 promotion. And then we got the giant ice storm. We had one reasonably warm day, then it snowed. Then it warmed up enough for some more freezing rain. Finally this weekend we managed to do something with it.

We googled gardening for dummies and came up with building a raised garden. After some discussion (read: arguing) we decided on one big raised garden for now, with possible additions next year if we're successful. So Travis got to work!

We covered the bottom with garden mesh to (hopefully) prevent our very tenacious and prickly weeds from coming up again. They were a main factor in our gardening failure last year.

Then we covered the bottom in composted cow manure, which surprisingly didn't smell as badly as we thought it would.

Then finally our entire Big Yellow Bag of dirt went into the garden. Next up will be planting. Right now we're still sprouting our seeds in miniature plastic greenhouses. Wish us luck!

On top of our raised garden, we are in the process of creating a hanging herb garden. Travis got the idea last year from his boss, who swears by it. So we re-purposed an old shoe organizer and are halfway done. We have to wait until Saturday to get the herb plants from the farmers market, but you can essentially see what we're going for. I've planted a few flowers just to add some colour to it, but the rest of the spaces will be various kitchen herbs.

The boys are very interested in our gardening efforts. Poor Arthur saw the frame for the new garden and thought Travis was building them a giant new sandbox! They've also been enjoying the opportunity to spend almost the entire day outside in the warm weather. They haven't even complained about my obsessive sunscreen re-applications every couple hours.