I've slumped a little on my plan. I got tired of tracking my points and got a little bummed out and just couldn't quite keep it together. But I'm still thinking about and focusing on my health and the health of my family, and one of the ways we are trying to move toward better values is to grow more of our own food. We had a little container garden last year, and it was pretty successful, but was also mostly managed by my mom when she came to watch Jasper. This year, we want to take our garden to the next level and really be proactive about it. We're already starting a little late in the season, but it's been so cool and rainy that we're not too far behind yet.
Starting our garden
The first thing I did was start planning out what we wanted to plant and where (I mapped it out in Visio!). We still have containers all around the deck, and those will be for our greens and herbs. Then we started talking raised beds. We're going to till up the side of the back yard that gets the best sun and put in two raised beds parallel to our strawberries that grow along the fenceline. At the fence, we'll grow some snap peas and bush beans. On the far side of the yard, amongst our few decorative shrubs, I'm going to randomly sow some summer and winter squash, and we'll see what sprouts.
toph's experiment is to make a potato box -- they say you can grow 100 lbs of potatoes in a 4-sq foot box! We might not get 100lbs, but we'll get some at least, and it will be fun to try it out. Potatoes can take up so much room that it will be awesome if we can do it in a small space!
In the raised beds, the plan is to grow mostly peppers, broccoli, tomatoes, and some carrots, radishes, and kohlrabi. We're trying to focus on veggies that we will reliably eat, that produce well without too much fuss, and that we can plant in April. To get a little head start, I started some seeds indoors in little peat pots -- broccoli, peppers, and kohlrabi. Jasper helped, and there were a lot of seeds in some of the pots. I'll have to do some thinning.
Today, we went out and got all the seeds and tools we needed, dug around in the yard and weeded the border, staked out the raised beds, fertilized all of our containers, and got some stuff planted! We planted rosemary, sage, oregano, and lemon thyme starts, and a container each of flat leaf parsley and cilantro seeds. Jasper helped with the seed planting, scattering seeds and scooping dirt to cover them up.
We still need to plant more spinach and kale, scallions, some more lettuce, and more herbs in the containers, and then lots of stuff in the raised beds once they are ready. But it's a good start toward having our own delicious ingredients that we can just walk out to the yard and pick! I love the idea of eating the food that we all grew together, and cooking with my own ingredients -- I know exactly what went into them, including all the love and energy we gave them as we coaxed them to grow. And most importantly, we're showing Jasper the importance of knowing where your food comes from and how to at least grow your own greens in the summer. We're never going to go live completely off the land, but knowing how to make things grow is a good skill, and a good way to use the land that we live on, and a good way to connect to the earth. It's moving toward values in a real and fundamental way, and it makes me really happy.
