Planted our garden

We put our garden in, and so far, it looks like this will be our best year yet! 

The first year, we started small.  We didn't want to put a ton of time and effort into it until we got the swing of things.  We planted a varitety of vegetables... pumpkins, cucumbers, peas, tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and some other things.  Peas and some cucumbers were all that produced, so I'm glad we didn't put much into it.

Last year, we planted a ton, but we didn't get much out of it.  The problem was that our cucumbers/squash/pumpkins all flowered, but nothing produced fruit.  After talking to some friends and my garden-savy sister in law about it, we decided the problem was due to a lack of bees/bugs cross polinating!  Ah-hah!  Makes sense.

This year, we went all out.  We changed the location to somewhere with more sun and already, it looks amazing!  Well... for the begining stages, it looks great!

We started cucumbers, delicata and zucchini in paper pots, which is what you see in this picture.  They are in the process of being planted (I was out all day today, otherwise they would have been in the ground today).  This garden is about 4 times the size... actually, probably closer to 5 or 6 times.  I am pretty confident that the problems from the past won't revisit... but if they do, I'm on to it and will be ready! 

Tomatoes and Broccoli

To get the kids a little more into it this year, I let them help me pick out some starter plants.  #1 picked out purple cabbage because she LOVES purple, and actually likes it... just like mommy!  She also picked out broccoli.  #2 picked out cherry tomatoes (she LOVES tomatoes... also like mommy) and yellow peppers.  #3 didn't pick anything because he slept through our trip to the farm stand. 

We are eager to see how it goes this year.  We had a few cucumbers last year and made some sweet pickles out of a few.  The kids also liked drinking cucumber water with the cucumbers we got.  I really hope we are able to do more this year!  Maybe I'll be a little more ambitions with the canning.  

Pumpkin patch with #1 and #2's colorful garden stakes

This is where our pumpkins will hopefully grow.