Garden

This is the first year we have ever planted a garden. We have started a ton of plants inside before but the never really made it to the ground outside. And we have done a tomato plant here and there. But, this year we decide to go all out and plant a garden.

Honestly, I have never really had much desire to garden. But Shanon, my 1st Counselor taught a sharing time in Primary one Sunday and said a couple of sentences about how the prophet said to plant a garden. It really touched my heart, because when Shanon speaks with her quiet, sweet voice it makes you stop and listen.

Here we are putting together the raised garden beds and filling with dirt.




Planting some plants. We bought a few plants already started but mainly we started good ole seeds. The plants we bought were about half of our watermelon, tomato, basil, sage, chives, eggplant, and jicama. We started from seeds corn, green beans, cantaloupe, watermelon, zucchini (which for the longest time I thought was carrots until zucchini showed up), and lettuce. Everything but the lettuce and carrots are doing fantastic.




This is about 2 weeks after planting our seeds.
We also bought strawberry plants but in the past 8+ weeks we have still not put them in the ground. They gave us a few berries though and Rose and Darin had fun tasting them.

This is about 5 weeks after starting our garden. For the record I did do Rose's hair this day even if she looks like an orphan. So says my mom who had stopped by.

And 8 weeks later our garden is thriving! At least the parts the bunnies have not eaten. Here's a tip, line your garden with watermelon and the bunnies will stay out. That whole part they haven't touched. However they have eaten almost all of my eggplant and jicama.

We need to move a couple of tomato plants because they are totally tangled together and growing like a huge bush. We have had about 3 tomatoes already. Not super big but as big as a large bouncy ball. The children did not want to taste the tomatoes though. My first eggplants! I can't wait, since eggplant is my favorite food ever!
Our sprawling watermelon patch. The 4' x 4' spot has overgrown into twice that size.
The corn is officially taller then our girls. Ken is seriously proud because on the way to church we drive past some corn fields and ours is at least a foot taller if not double in size.
We got out first zucchini! The kids were so excited, everyone wanted to take their picture with it.
They were not very enthused about eating it for dinner though.
It has been a great experience to watch our garden grow. Our children have LOVED it! I thought they would be fascinated for a week or two but they are super excited about it. Like excited enough that I can tell them they have to finish their chores before they can go out and water the garden. It's been alot of fun for our family!

Dear, wonderful Shanon, we THANK YOU for inspiring us to plant a garden!