Going Green... many pics

Gabe and I have decided that we wanted to grow our own produce by having a garden. It's something that we've always wanted to do and this year, we were finally able to.

We ordered a variety pack of seeds from online (52 different types of veggies) but because it is only our first year, we are only planting about half of them. We are doing Square Foot Gardening because we live in the city so land is scarce. It has and will be a LOT of trial and error the first year or two. I know that each year we do it, we'll get better and better and our goal is to eventually be able to get all of our produce from our own back yard.

Last October, we had 2 apple trees, a pomegranate tree, an apricot tree, 2 blackberry bushes, and 2 grape bushes planted throughout our property. We also have 2 plum trees that were planted in 2009 and 4 strawberry bushes and 2 blueberry bushes that we bought this year.

Our apricot tree starting to bloom.

One of the grape bushes sprouting green leaves.

The smaller plum tree.

The larger plum tree. Really hope to get some of them before the birds this year!

Gabe spent many hours building garden boxes and setting them up. He did such a good job!

There are three more other boxes on the other side of the house.

 We also had some left over drawers from our kitchen remodel that we re-purposed as more garden boxes. In the smaller one, we planted parsley, cilantro, and basil. In the other, we have a variety of flowers.

We started by planting green onions, sweet onions, celery, broccoli, cabbage, a lettuce mix, butter lettuce, and spinach indoors at the end of February and I'm ecstatic that they ALL sprouted! We were even able to transplant the lettuces and spinach yesterday!

A week later, we planted sweet peas, snap peas, carrots, red radish, corn, yellow squash, zucchini, and bush beans outdoors and tomatoes indoors.

The following week, honey dew melon, watermelon, cucumbers, and butter lettuce outdoors and more broccoli, celery, green/red peppers, and jalapeno peppers indoors.

Yesterday, we planted more corn, carrots, red radish, spinach, and lettuce mix outdoors and another cabbage plant indoors. And as I said above, we were able to transplant the previous plantings of lettuce and spinach.

You still reading...?

Whew! So much work but I know it'll be worth it. I love seeing the green popping up everywhere! here's a few more pics of the boxes and what's growing.

Red Radish and Corn

Carrots

Snap Peas

Even got a compost!

The 2 blueberry bushes.

Strawberries. YUM!

So there you have it. I know it'll be a year or two before we have much or any fruit but we are so excited to be growing our own produce and the savings will be nice too!