How Our Garden Grows

"Mom, come here! You have to see these cucumbers! They are HUGE!!!!!"

"Mom, can we please pick the kale so we can make kale chips? I love kale chips!"

Come on, what mom doesn't like to hear the excitement in their kids' voices when they are talking about vegetables?! What could be better?

Every year we plant a garden. Usually it includes a wide variety of tomatoes and cucumbers. This year we decided to go big! We planted a Square Foot Garden and we love it! It was a bit of work in the beginning but that's what husbands are for. :o) Hee hee. Seriously though, it wasn't that hard and you can purchase kits with all the boards pre-cut and ready to go if you like.

The idea of the square foot garden is that it is a raised bed which means you can put it anywhere. You don't have to till the earth, you simply build the box and fill it with dirt. Easy Peasy! This design means you can even put it on your driveway or rooftop.

Another cool thing about it is that the vine plants grow vertically. My hubby made a trellis and we have watermelon, squash, tomatoes and cucumbers growing upwards so we can fit more into the space.

The box can be made in many sizes but the standard size is 4x4. We made 2 boxes that are 4x8 so we got lots of goodies. The box is divided up into 1x1 foot squares and you can plant each item in its own square. The book helps you plan it out and tells you how many of each vegetable will fit into the square. Tomatoes fit just 1 per square but cucumbers fit 4 and carrots fit 16. Pretty cool.

We have onions, garlic, butternut squash, collards, kale, watermelon, carrots, 6 kinds of tomatoes, 2 kinds of cucumbers, tomatillos, peppers, and a great variety of herbs. Now that the season is winding down I may see about putting in some cool crops for the fall. It's so fun.

If you have always wanted to try a garden and you just didn't know where to start this is a great way to get started. Even if you have experience with gardening like we did, you might want to give this a try. It looks so neat and tidy, requires a lot less work, and gives you a big bounty for little space.