Look What Grew In Our Garden
I know ya’ll love a garden update and I’m SO excited to share ours with you! As you know, I shared about our raised beds back on May 5th. You can read all about that by clicking here. We have had a raised bed garden for the past 6 years and it has been a huge blessing in our lives. I grew up having a huge garden at my Dad’s farm and to be able to have a similar experience with my own children is really meaningful to me.
So far, everything is growing really well! We make sure that it’s watered every day (it’s actually Nolan’s job to do this in the afternoons after the sun goes down a little.) He gets so excited when he goes out there and runs back in to tell us what is growing. That leads to all of us going outside and looking, so spending more time outside is a perk!
Last weekend, Derrek actually built little trellises for the cucumber and watermelon vines to grow up on and they are weaving their vines through it so much. There are also little inch long cucumbers on some of the vines. Cucumbers grow so easily when they have something to climb on and are very fruitful. We end up having to give away a ton because we have an over abundance. This could be a vegetable you could grow in a pot as well with a trellis in the middle. The watermelon vines haven’t gotten any flowers on them yet but I don’t think they will be ready to harvest until beginning on July – I could be wrong.
Everything else that we planted is growing really well and our two super producers: lettuce and radishes, are currently being harvested. If you are wondering where you could start with a garden, lettuce is where it’s at. I mean I couldn’t think of a more beautiful and easy to grow crop. AND, if you cut them with scissors above the root (I leave about 1.5 inches left) then they will continue to grow. What you DO NOT want to do with your lettuce is not harvest because they will continue to grow and then form flowers. When this happens, the taste completely changes and has a woody bitter taste.
The radishes are pretty much the same and could easily be grown in a pot for space reasons. I am actually needing to plant more seeds because we were able to harvest all of the radishes that we planted. I am going to pickle all of them with a recipe that I will share along with my cucumber pickle recipe in a few weeks. They grow really easily. I didn’t “tend” to any of them unless to water or thin out a little bit so that they could have the space to grow bigger. I love them but no one else does so I will be the one only enjoying them, haha!
It doesn’t matter what space you have for a garden, you can use it in a way that works for you. The goal is to start somewhere! Plant lettuce or carrots in a pot, get one tomato plant going, or squash. It’s so interesting to watch them grow, to have to tend to them and focus your mind and then get to eat your labor of love. I am so excited that our garden is growing and so are the kids, they really enjoy going and seeing the different things, getting to harvest and then eating it is a cool full circle moment.
