Our Garden

    I love my garden.  We have had some pretty awesome fruits and vegetables come from it so far. When we first got to our house about 2 years ago, we started up our garden.  We made raised beds 8 inches deep.  Our backyard is pretty much hardpan clay, so raised beds seemed to be our only option.  We started with green beans, sweet potatoes, lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, garlic, a few herbs, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, grapes... and a few other things.
    The green beans grew. We got about 5 handfuls throughout the summer.  Lettuce supplied us with about 3 heads.  We got a couple handfuls of strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries... although the birds got to a few of them before we did.  We are most proud of our sweet potatoes.  There must have been at least 15 pounds!  They grew under our weed block! We dug for what seemed like hours trying to pry them all out of the dirt! They cooked beautifully too.  I have never seen such an orange color from a sweet potato!
   We also planted 2 apple trees.  Nothing there yet.. maybe this year we will get a few.
   Our tomatoes looked pretty sad throughout the spring and summer and didn't start taking off until late October.  Unfortunately, the freeze got to them.
   We are excited for what this year will bring.  It is such a rewarding feeling to grow and care for fruits and veggies and I encourage others to try.  Start off simple.  When we lived in our apartments we had a few things in pots.
    Oh, I do want to tell you about our maple tree. We were at my parents house and a seed from their maple fell into one of our pots.  When we brought our pot home, we noticed something growing and decided to let it go so we could see what it would turn into.  We took pictures as it grew and now it is about 6 feet tall!!


    Here our a few websites to get you started on your garden:

 http://www.bhg.com/gardening/vegetable/vegetables/planning-your-first-vegetable-garden/

http://www.weekendgardener.net/vegetable-gardening-tips/starting-garden-050705.htm

http://www.almanac.com/content/vegetable-garden-planning-beginners


A few pictures of our garden:

Sweet Potatoes

Raspberries

Lettuce

Green Beans growing

The beginning stage of our beds