Gardening

I never really had a garden until two years ago. In Texas we tinkered around with a garden but our two major crops were tomatoes and cucumbers. Last year in Indiana was AMAZING! We had potatoes, tomatoes, zucchini (bugs killed it!), carrots, basil, dill, cilantro, beets, strawberries, green beans, snow and snap peas, cabbage, cucumbers, lettuces, spinach, pumpkins, broccoli and currents. I LOVED being able to go out and pick something for dinner. I REALLY loved making stir-fry with TONS of snow peas. Not only did we eat great during the summer but we saved TONS of money.

Colleen and a big bucket of green beans last year.

With March's Ensign focusing on self-reliance, the recession and my new found love of gardening (or at least eating from the garden), I have decided to write a series of gardening and cooking-from-your-garden blogs.

This week Aleah and I planted seeds in leftover-from-last-year seedling containers. She was sad about the "no flowers coming up" issue so we planted lavender and marigolds as well as Roma tomatoes and multicolored bell peppers. We bought seedlings at Walmart last year but decided to try our own starts this year. If they don't work I figure we can head for Walmart but if they do we have saved some money. Here is a link for info on starting seeds.



As a motivation for starting a garden I am going to post super good recipes using our garden ingredients. This is a super yummy spinach, broccoli and cheese quiche we made last year. You will be VERY SAD this summer if you don't plant at least tomatoes, snow peas, lettuces, beans and basil. Those are the crops I consider essential. If you want to plant more, see the list of stuff we planted last year.

Evidence a garden doesn't have to be weed free to grow.

Maren, who is due in May, asked if we were going to have a garden this year. I said we were and that it would just be really, really weedy instead of just weedy this year. When I told Brian, he asked, "Why wouldn't we have a garden?" Obviously he has never tried to bend over when VERY pregnant. In his defense he really does most of the garden work. The point of that cute story is THERE ARE NO EXCUSES! Not a shady yard, a small yard, no yard, no experience or a big belly. Grow something this year and you will not regret it or the effort.



So, this week's goal is to make a plan:

1. Where will your garden be? (window sills and pots on the porch are acceptable answers)
   
2. Write down what would you like to plant.
   

Next week:

1. Start collecting seeds. Check out seedsavers.org. It has TONS of rare varieties of plants if you are looking for something a little different.
   
2. Start seedlings if you would like.

Let me know what you decide - I can't wait to see your gardens.

P.S. Emily took all of the garden pictures last year. Isn't she great?!