Gardening

We are getting a late start on our garden this year, but hopefully we will still have plenty of time to grow everything and enjoy eating garden fresh veggies and a few fruits.  This year is the first year that we have planted a garden since 2009.  We normally travel a lot during the summer, making a garden hard to care for properly.   Now that we are homeschooling Elliott, we are planning our travel times during the off season.

At our current house, we really don't have a great location for a garden anyway.  We have several trees in our yard, and between them, our house, the neighbor's garage, and our shed, there's just too much shade for a garden very large to grow very well.


This year our garden is going on our newly purchased empty lot.  The garden is going to be much larger than one we could do at our current house, since there's no house over there yet to worry about.  We are planting a little bit of everything, including potatoes, corn, squash, zucchini, tomatoes, broccoli, lettuce, spinach, carrots, three different kinds of peppers, and various herbs, among other things.  We are really excited.  Now that we are eating organic food when we can find it, this will save us a lot of money.  We're planning on mainly buying from farmer's markets to supplement it as well, and get us started on the fresh local stuff before ours comes in.  Almost all of the plants that we have started inside have done well, so we hope that is a sign of good things to come. :)

Over the last several months we have been eating organic when possible, and it has made a huge difference in what Elliott is willing to eat.  He can tell the difference in the way that a lot of vegetables taste now, and really has a strong preference for all things organic.  It used to be a struggle nearly everyday to get him to eat at least 3-4 servings of veggies, along with 3-4 servings of fruit.  If we have organic produce, he will happily munch on that for a snack, eating several servings of each one each day, in addition to what I serve at meal times.  I have a feeling that with stuff that he actually gets to help grow, he might be willing to branch out and try things that he hasn't especially liked in the past, especially since it will all be organic.

We should be able to go till our garden this weekend.  We just have one more piece of paperwork to sign before the land is officially ours, and that should be done tonight or tomorrow.  We are so excited.  :)