Time to get my green thumb ready

The snow is gone, my daffodils are emerging, things need pruned, the Burpee catalog has been requested - spring is here!  I have so many projects I need to be working on, but I really wanted to get this post up.  These photos make me so happy, and that's what spring is all about.

Last year we spent a ridiculous amount of money creating a new garden space.  Not just any ol' tilled up piece of ground though, we built my actual dream garden!  Yeah, I know, who has that?  ME!  I wanted a pretty space to garden in.  Neat, organized, weed-free and fenced to keep our animals out (it partially worked).  My husband and I picked a spot, sprayed the grass, and then proceeded to spend enough money on it to daily say, "This garden better produce lots of food, 'cause we're gonna need to live off it." as we filled it with wood, dirt and rocks.

My parents started doing raised bed gardens like 25 years ago with great success.  So with the resurgence of the Square-Foot Gardening craze due to the economy, we jumped on the band wagon.  We had been planning to do raised beds, and it was finally the year to get that project done.

PART 1:
We ended up with a plan that has 256 sq ft of garden space!  Yes, that's enough to feed a small village.  But we do have 3 boys, remember?  It took us about a month to get it all done, so we ended up planting just after Memorial Day.  Sooooo......da da da DA!  Here it is a few weeks after planting!

The fencing is pricey, and the same we use for our animals, but it's sturdy and we use it as a support also.  The front edge, where the gate is, we plan on putting an arbor over the gate and planting grape vines along the fence this year.  The small box on the right center is my herb garden, and the one on the left is my strawberry patch.

My neighbors probably thought I was a little crazy because I spent so much time photographing my garden, but here are the photos of my lovely little vegetables.

Beets (yeah, I know - duh!)

 

 Bush beans.

Cucumber vines.

Squash blossom.

Cabbage (ended up going in the compost bin later after a bug infestation).

Strawberry flower blossoms.  We got SO many strawberries off our first year plants!  I had plenty of help picking them, none ever actually made it into the house.

Romaine lettuce.

My one and ONLY spaghetti squash that my dog didn't reach through the fence and eat.  Apparently she has a thing for squash and pumpkins.  They will be moved further in this year.

Lovely green tomatoes.

Cherry and Pear tomatoes.  SO yummy and sweet.  Makes my mouth water just looking at the photo.  I totally snacked on these every day when I watered.

My butternut squash took over half of the garden like a giant squid!  But we got some great squash from it that turned into the most awesome soup.  I'm preparing to post the recipe soon.

I'm so proud of this photo.  Tears.  I not only grew these two blond cuties, but the watermelon they are holding also!  Yes.  I grew a watermelon.  The plan was for the kids to partner up and help raise certain parts of the garden.  They planted, I ended up doing the rest of everything with some help watering, and picking.  But they all got to decide some of what was planted in their boxes.  They wanted watermelon, so we tried it and I was totally amazed that it worked.  I had never planted watermelon before and this Sugar Baby was so good and sweet.

PART 2:

So, after all that planting, I needed a way to remember what I had planted, where, what varieties, and how it worked out.  I found some garden planner ideas, and this is what I came up with for my garden.

 

Front: Really simple design for now in a 1 inch binder.

On the back I have the whole garden plan labeled.

Each box corresponds with it's letter on the plan.

On the right side of the page is a place for the info.  I HIGHLY reccomend Scarlet Nantes carrots!

Close-up of my lovely little herb garden plan.

I just used Microsoft Publisher to do all this, so it was really easy.  I printed everything on cardstock to make it sturdy, and the blank pages in between, will be for photos.  Now that I'm done with 2009 they'll go into page protectors to keep them clean and I'll print out new pages for this year.  If you click on the photos you can read them larger to see more of the details of my garden.

The best part of our garden was that nothing went to waste.  Anything we didn't eat or didn't work out, went to the chickens to eat, or into the compost bin.  As you can see, it really made me happy, and I can't wait to get started again.  It was a huge initial investment and a lot of work, but this year, other than cleaning up old plants and re-stringing, it's ready to go.  Hopefully I'll be planting, and eating, spinach soon.  Of course I'll take photos.