Our Garden

This morning was one of the most beautiful spring days all year. Usually Houston is already muggy and warm by now, but a late season cool front brought us low humidity and unseasonably cool temperatures (40F degrees last night!). Given that we had such beautiful weather, we HAD to plant the garden this morning. We have even delayed starting our schoolwork today to enjoy what may be one of the few gorgeous mornings we have left before the heat and humiditiy arrive for good.

I have wanted to garden with the girls for quite some time, but I just hadn't gotten to it. A few weeks ago, a friend and I were talking about gardening (she has A LOT of experience) and she suggested starting small with what is known as "square foot gardening." It doesn't require a lot of space to get a good harvest, it is organized, and it is contained. Sounded good, so I checked it out. http://www.squarefootgardening.com/.

So after deciding how much garden I wanted, I asked my dad to help me build a 2x5 foot garden box and a 2x3 foot herb box. He did a beautiful job as you can see from the pictures(unfortunately the weather was not as cool and pretty as it is today. Sorry, Dad!).

Yesterday I finally got my soil components and filled the garden box (didn't have enough to do the herb box, though) and the remaining plants I wanted. This morning we planted a combination of plants and seeds. My location is shady (dappled) all morning and sunny all afternoon.

Prepared Garden

Planting

Finished Garden

Front row: Petunias, heirloom cucumber, strawberry, green peppers, cherry tomato


Back row: Petunias, dwarf sunflowers, heirloom bush green beans, heirloom watermelon

I also planted parsley in the pretty blue pot that Darby made for me (put it in my kitchen window) and an heirloom tomato in an upside-down hanging bucket. Weird, I know, but so much fun to watch! The plant will turn and grow up until the tomatoes get heavy enough to pull it back down.

Even if nothing grows or we have a small harvest, the experience was worth it. I kept hearing from the girls, "This is so FUN!" and "Mom, we need to do more gardening."

So cool!