Growing Things

Two weeks ago, when we thought the weather was FINALLY going to be nice, we planted a garden (tomatoes, lettuce, radishes, carrots, watermelon and cantaloupe). --The radishes have already come up, but we're still waiting to see any signs of the carrots and lettuce.

We also relocated our strawberries from last year. We were so excited to see that they came back.

We used the containers the trees came in. How "green" is that? And best of all, we planted 3 trees!

Our backyard faces West and gets A LOT of sun in the afternoon/evening. It's not fun to be out there during hot Summer evenings. We decided we needed some trees to shade and hopefully cool things off a bit. We bought "Legacy Sugar Maple" trees. Little did I realize when we bought them, that they are "slow growing". Darn! Well, eventually we'll have shade...... I hope.


Everyone joined the fun of tree planting.
Watch out... Abree's got the shovel!

Our future SHADE!

Ahhhhh, so much better already. :)

Taylee was the most excited about planting. She LOVES getting her hands in the dirt, watching things grow and admiring creation. She said over and over, "I'm SO glad we planted those trees. I feel like we've really accomplished something."

Thanks again Larsen's, for the awesome garden box.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

So far, so good.

Our garden plants are getting BIG. We've even harvested a few things; spinach, lettuce, a few strawberries and a few pea pods. Two of our 3 tomato plants, got a little frost a few weeks back and are struggling. We think one may pull out, but the other one looks quite haggard. After we harvest all of the lettuce, we will have more room for more tomato plants and more strawberries. Our kids have loved having our little garden and fight over the ripe produce. Hopefully we will have enough to go around once everything reaches harvest season.

Going GREEN...I hope.

Because of all the moving around, Jason and I have only planted 1 garden, in our married life. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.) That 1 garden was actually motivated by Jason's brother, who was living with us at the time. We didn't spend a lot of time weeding and tending and accidentally over-watered it. Everything turned out yucky and squishy. The corn looked deformed and fungi-like. Not appealing at all!
With the Larsen's getting ready to move, they offered us their garden box. We accepted and were assured that using the garden box and sprinkler system (designed by Ryan) that we would have an edible crop by harvest time. We were excited about the possibilities. ---By the way, this little garden box, built by Ryan, is awesome! It's off the ground (no leaning over and less weeds), it drains it's self and the PVC mist sprinklers have an automatic timer. So the garden is not over-watered. Thanks Ryan. We LOVE it!

So for FHE, on Monday, we went to Lowes and picked out several plant starters and a few seeds. Then we planted them the next day. It was an awesome sunny day...we haven't had another one like it since.



Taylee made some garden stakes to help us know where we planted the potatoes, carrots and cantaloupe.









Abree...




and Kyrick "helped" by jumping on the trampoline.













Treyson was very interested in the process and could hardly keep his hands out of the dirt.










Taylee was also very interested in planting. She liked helping to plant the sweet peas.










Rylee, tired from running in PE and track hung out a little, but mostly watched.








The "helpers"






The finished product or should I say the beginning of our GREEN adventure.






In all, we planted tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, romaine lettuce, spinach, strawberries, bell peppers, sweet peas and cantaloupe. We didn't follow the spacing guidelines very closely. We'll see if they are absolutely necessary. Wish us luck!