Waiting for Spring

Anyone who knows me well (or who endures my complaining on Facebook) likely knows my feelings about winter. I love to spend time outside. Camping, hanging out on our deck, swimming...whatever. Winter makes those things next to impossible, so by the time Spring rolls around I am beyond ready for warmer weather. Another reason I look forward to warmer weather is, no surprise, my garden.

Last year we bought the house we now live in, and one of the biggest reasons we decided it was the one was the yard. I remember walking up to the glass doors that look out over the deck and immediately falling in love with the huge trees, all the space and the fact that it backed up to a wooded area. After years of living in duplexes with tiny, shared patches of grass Nathan and I both agreed that we wanted a lot of outside space. We bought our house in February and in April we started building our raised beds. And by the end of May we had a nice little garden going!

 

  we (aka Nathan) built 4 raised
beds from cedar fence posts

our garden at the end of May

Since I post quite a bit on Facebook I have a pretty good timeline for anyone who is curious. Of course it's neat to watch your garden grow, but the best part is

finally getting some food!

April 20th:    Planted seeds (spinach, squash, carrots, etc)

May 1st:        Planted starters (tomatoes and peppers)

May 29th:     Everything was growing well (photo above)

June 10th:      Harvesting spinach and herbs regularly
June 27th:      Harvested first tomato, squash and zucchini!
July 14th:       Harvested carrots

By mid July we were picking tomatoes, squash and zucchini regularly. From this point on our garden produced more and more...I ended up with almost 20 pounds of tomatoes at one point! This came from four regular tomato plants and two cherry tomato plants. We then started canning, which I have to say has been wonderful to have through winter.

18 pounds of tomatoes!

Adelle and her friend
Rosie picking cherry tomatoes

Canning is definitely something I'd like to talk more about in the future. It is so simple and tastes wonderful, not to mention is a huge money saver if you have a surplus from your garden or find a good deal at the farmers market.

everything we canned last year

our last haul from the garden, right
before out first freeze (oct 21st)

I knew once I had a yard I wanted a big garden. My mom always grew a garden and as someone who likes to know where my food is coming from, a garden only made sense. But I really don't think I was prepared for how awesome it would be. I'm not sure most people would put gardening in the "awesome" category, and maybe I am just a bit obsessed, but gardening is actually a lot of fun. It takes some work of course, but it was pretty incredible to watch my tiny little plants grow to giving me a counter full of vegetables and a cabinet full of food for winter. Not to mention that organic heirloom tomatoes are currently going for $7 a pound at Whole Foods...have I mentioned I am ready to have "free" food in my yard again?!

In my next post I will go over what we are planting this year. We are trying some new things (ever heard of ground cherries or tree tomatoes?) and nixing some foods that didn't seem worth growing again. We are also adding space to our garden...maybe this year I will have 40 pounds of tomatoes!


-Kelly