A Garden Tale - Part 1

Ok, so I have taken numerous photos of our gardening process this year with the intention of showing them to you all, complete with regular updates, but I have been really slack (or really busy) and have totally neglected to do so.

 We used an assortment of items we had around the house.

Egg cartons are not a good idea.

So here's some "back story" right now, complete with pictures!  This is our third year gardening and this year we decided to plant almost everything from seed, which we haven't done much of in past years.  In March we planted most of our seeds and kept them indoors near a window.  We made mini greenhouses out of plastic bags to keep in moisture and humidity.  It all worked out pretty well.

 Most of the first batch of seeds we planted.

Our first year we mostly grew everything in pots.  Last year we grew our garden in a small spot near the house with a few plants in pots on our back patio.  This year, we decided that we really wanted to go much bigger and better.  So we tilled up a spot about 20' x 30', bought some fencing (since we have deer, rabbits, and squirrels in our yard often), and started getting it all set up.

Tiny sprouts.

More tiny sprouts.

Another new thing for us this year is growing in raised beds.  For these, we really couldn't afford to build boxes so we just piled up the dirt until we had raised beds.  Raised beds help to maintain moisture and reduce weeds.

Seedlings.

Next we mulched.  Mulching around garden plants is another way to keep the moisture in and the weeds out.  We have a big compost pile this year, too, but it's not quite ready to go in the garden so we've just been raking up the under layer of leaves and using that.  It has helped out tremendously.

Squash & Zucchini seedlings.

As I mentioned before we have already started harvesting some vegetables and herbs.

Zucchini.

Watch for my next gardening post in which I'll share about what we're growing and show you some more pictures.  :-)

 Squash.