Guest post by Mavis from OneHundredDollarsAMonth.com.
Last weekend I went over to my neighbor Lulu’s garden to check on the potatoes we had planted just a few weeks earlier. Lulu and I walked over to the garden beds and discovered the red potato plants were starting to break through the soil. Thumbs up, Lulu… nice job. If an eight year old can grow vegetables, so can YOU!
For the most part, gardening can be one of the most frugal {and rewarding} hobbies out there if you stick to the basics. Good soil, seeds and water. Think about it: soil, seeds and water were all the Pilgrims had to work with. They didn’t use specialty fertilizer, soil gauges, fancy tools, heck, they didn’t even have the luxury of wearing cutesy garden clogs {no Amazon.com, how sad} to help their vegetables grow. Just dirt.
So this year, for Lulu’s first garden, we are sticking to the basics. I want to teach her {and apparently now her little brother} you don’t need any fancy gizmos or chemicals to grow food. Just a few seeds and some superior weed pulling skills.
Over the weekend I had Lulu and her little brother plant Black Valentine bush beans. Lulu and I decided to plant bush beans rather than pole beans so her little brother would be able to help with the harvest. Pole beans can grow as tall as 6 feet and we didn’t want the little man to get frustrated when harvest time came.
The weather has warmed considerably here in the Pacific Northwest and now is the perfect time to start planting all your warm weather crops. Over the weekend in my personal garden, I planted zucchini, cucumbers, pumpkins and also set my tomato plants into the ground. All 100+ of them.
Gardening should be fun. Not a chore. If you put in the time and effort now, and you’ll be able to reap the benefits in just a few short months.
Will you be planting a garden this year? What are you looking forward to harvesting?
Mavis is a Northwest gardener on a mission to grow 2,000 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables in her suburban backyard this summer. You can follow her gardening journey on her blog OneHundredDollarsAMonth.com.
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All this talk of all these veggies and berries and melons and…I’m getting seriously hungry!
We produce appx 75% of our food… so we have planted everything you can think of. (seriously… horseradish, berries of all kinds, chards, lettuces, spinach, kale of more kinds, all heirloom, and most from seed saving) The main tomatoes are going in the ground tomorrow along with the squashes/melons. I will try and post more pics on the blog in a few days… after graduation! 🙂 You can really see the new growth (and little weeds) growing everywhere!
This is my second year doing a small container garden. Last year all that we were able to harvvest was tomatoes. This year we’ve planted tomatoes, watermelon, cilantro, pumpkin, garden beans, bell peppers and eggplant.
Love this post! I have been gardening for 4 years now and LOVE it!
I started my first ever raised garden bed this spring and have planted squash (summer and zuccini), lettuce, peppers and strawberries.
My favorite though is zuccini, in my area they thrive and it allows me to stock up for the year.
With our typical zuccini harvest we:
* make and freeze lots of zuccini bread and muffins
* freeze shredded zuccini to add into our dinners (my kids Iove it in spaghetti)
* freeze sliced, breaded zuccini for breaded strips later! (family favorite!)
My children and I are so excited for the plants to start showing progress!
I planted:
beans – which have sprouted!
peas – which have sprouted!
beets – have sprouts!
some basil – yes its coming up too!
super exciting 🙂
Also, there are radishes, buckwheat cover crop and transplanted mint. (Yes, I know the traveling dangers of mint, I’ve been warned) The tomato plants are store bought this year and also the pepper plants. There are some Pattie Pan squash seeds germinating too 🙂
Hooray seeds!