Harvest Time

Dare I say it, we might have a green thumb?! A few months ago we planted our very first vegetable garden. We chose to make a raised bed and use the square foot gardening plans, just to make it easy on ourselves. We didn't want to do too much our first year, in case we killed everything. Ha!

As you can clearly see, our garden has grown! And grown... and grown...

I just have to sing the praises of the raised bed garden idea.   No digging up your yard, exceptional soil (since you create it yourself), no weeds to pull, less chances of throwing out the back... Our only problem is that we over planted for our space. We are "green" gardeners (as in completely clueless), and really had no idea what we were doing. Next year we'll hopefully expand by about 2-3 more 4x4 beds and we'll do a little better at spacing the plants out. Some of our smaller plants ended up totally shadowed by our monster tomato plants.

Speaking of, can't wait to get my hands on some of these!

Ultimately, I am thrilled with the outcome. Our paltry pea harvest isn't going to feed our whole family for even one meal. But our whole goal at the beginning of this was just to show the princesses where food REALLY comes from (you mean not from the grocery store??). About 2 months ago we watched the documentary Food, Inc. and it really solidified our already present tendencies to want to eat as naturally and as close to the source as possible.

So, we're taking small steps in that direction.  I'm already looking forward to next year's garden, and am excited about making meals like this entirely with home-grown veggies (with the exception of the pasta of course.  Didn't plant any pasta seeds.  Ha!)

And mostly I'm excited about the princesses learning an important lesson about food, where it comes from, and the ripple effect our actions have on that food.