Spring is here! Technically we are almost in summer but with the strange weather patterns it feels like spring just arrived. With that, my husband and I got this gardening feel surge through us. Mind you, we have never been the gardening-type folk. We both suffer from seasonal allergies and our parents enjoyed working in the garden so we never had to. So why start now?
Benefits of a Home Fruit / Vegetable Garden
Food has gotten more expensive these days, especially fresh fruits and vegetables. When you buy produce from the grocery store, typically it goes bad fairly quickly. By the time it reaches the store, it is already long past it peak ripeness. I found out how true this is when a friend gave me some fresh lettuce from their garden. Usually iceberg or green lettuce stays good only for few days before they start to brown/wilt. The lettuce from my friend’s yard stayed perfectly green and crisp for close to two weeks. I was amazed. Later on I bought strawberries and blueberries for astronomical prices only to find they had mold on them the following day. We then decided to look into growing our own.
The first day it started to get warm in our area, we went to Costco and saw numerous amounts of people with vegetable and fruit plants in their carts. We chose to buy a 3-pack of tomatoes and a 3-pack of strawberries. We have a wonderful area in our back yard that gets a lot of sun but the ground is dry and rock-hard. Until we got a chance to transplant them, we just watered the plants and kept them in the original pots for the time being.
Starting a Garden – Growing Strawberries, Cucumbers & More
Saturday was the day we took the plunge. We threw on some gardening gloves, got out big giant sun hats and started cultivating the land. We moved the rose bush and another plant to we could dedicate a good-size area for our organic stash. We planted tomatoes, cucumbers, lemon cucumbers, honeydew, strawberries, and corn. Corn? We were surprised to see it at our local OSH store so we are hoping it is some kind of dwarf variety. Otherwise we might need to get a tractor and some pairs of overalls. It took us all day to hoe and shovel the dirt, add some organic soil, and then put the little plants in their new homes. When we were dirty and sweaty (from gardening of course) it was such a nice feeling looking at what we had accomplished. Now all we have to do is care well for them and wait 2-3 months to start harvesting.
Photos: We got to see exactly how a strawberry grows – good science lesson for our daughter and for us.
