Garden

If at first you don't succeed; try, try, again. That's the motto we have decided to adapt for our gardening adventure. Last year's garden was a flop. It was at my sister-in-laws house (we really do appreciate you lending us a section of your yard so that we might cultivate our talents....) but Jenn and I were both miserably pregnant, and it was deathly hot, and I just didn't have the energy to keep up with the endless supply of weeds.... so we were a little hesitant to have a garden, but we decided to leave our failures behind us and to try again....

This is our little garden plot. It measures precisely 10 ft by 7 ft 6 in. I have researched all about companion planting because I wanted to make the most of our little piece of land. So I found that you plant the rows North to South (I think I posted about this last year) and I read up on what plants love and what they hate. So, Nate and I drew up a diagram in Excel that had grid lines.... we measured and we planned and we huffed and we puffed, and after 2 solid hours of deliberation, we were ready to plant!

The next morning we began to weed and till the earth... we planted our little peppers precisely 6 inches from the border lines and we spaced them exactly 18 inches apart... we then carefully planted the green onions 1 foot away from the peppers (because I am an expert in companion planting, I already know that peppers and onions LOVE each other) hee hee hee..... and then we planted our tomatoes...

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and we fell short of room. We didn't have enough room to plant our 2 rows of peas! Where on earth did we go wrong? Our calculations were precise!!! We scratched our little noggins and we mulled over the fact that we had miscalculated.... and we finally accepted the fact that we had no where to plant our peas. So we decided to plant a row of carrots.

All in all, we had to cut out peas, lettuce, and zucchini. :( I guess we were just a little over zealous.

But Ava had so much fun discovering the "hot potato bugs" and all the "spiders" (which were really worms.)

She was Daddy's little helper.

Before we reveal the FINAL product of our labors, I wanted to take a picture of what the other gardens look like. I think it'll be fun to take a picture every Monday and see how much these little gardens will change.... so here you have it, Week 1.

TA DA!!! Here it is! Our GARDEN! On the left side starting in the back, we have orange and green bell peppers. We then have a row of green onions, then 2 tomato plants and then a row of carrots. On the right hand side we have a hill for cantaloupe, and a hill for cucumbers. On the very right side of our garden we planted 3 sunflowers and some sweat peas (that's what the little trellis thing is for).

I also read that having marigolds is good for your garden, so those line the pathway.

And now a close up for the cantaloupe and cucumber mounds.

Isn't she a beauty?

One of our lovely, stinky marigolds. (Seriously, have you ever smelled them? Not my fave.)

Our "Roma" tomato plant. I also planted a "Cherry" tomato plant.

Our peppers.

Our sweet pea trellis.

And even though I am extremely proud of our garden, nothing brings a smile to my face like my little kiddies do.