Thursday, March 29, 2012

Our Little Urban Garden, Part 1

 Last year, we participated in a CSA with another family. We got all kinds of greens and vegetables that lasted us all spring and summer. It was great. It encouraged me to cook more vegetables, try new things like kale (which I had no idea what to do with) and other random foods we would get in our box each week. My husband grew up on a farm. The idea that people would join a CSA and not grow their own food was a bit foreign to him. All grown up, we live in the city. We live in a subdivision at that. Not much land in comparison to what he lived on when he was a boy.

This year, we got the Burgess seed catalog (which by the way, I have no idea why I ever started receiving their literature in the mail to begin with). We talked it over and decided we would have a garden this year. Grow what we wanted to and not be subject to random foods that we got in a box each week that we may or may not like to eat. At that point, my husband got the laptop and ordered seeds for us to plant in a couple months.

The morning he was going to start tilling our back yard, he had a revelation that kept him awake a good part of the night. Maybe tilling isn't the brightest thing we should do in our yard. We have a gutter that runs off the back corner of our house. The runoff water flows into a pipe that is underground and empties on down the hill. The thought was...."What if I till, hit the pipe and shred it to pieces? We will have a big mess on our hands!" I agreed with this assessment and we are going to do raised garden beds instead. All built by my darling husband.

I love that my little one is in the background with his ears covered while the cutting is being done!

The finished product in place in our back yard.


A stop at the dirt place and this is what your truck looks like. I'm amazed the truck made it back
home without dragging the whole way home.

Filled boxes. Now, we are waiting for the seeds to start sprouting before we transfer them outside.

This should be a fun adventure. For anyone who knows me, I do not have a green thumb in the least bit. I'm counting on the fact that my husband knows what he is doing and I plan on just following his instructions!