Gardening

So a little hobby of ours is gardening.  We used to plant mostly tomatoes and bell peppers, with a little bit of a lot of other stuff.  We plant the tomatoes mostly for canning (the best way I can figure to avoid BPA in canned foods!) and for the best summer food ever – BLT sandwiches.  Yum, there are not many better tasting foods than a BLT with home grown tomatoes and lettuce too if you are lucky enough.  We freeze the bell peppers and use them throughout the year.  We LOVE bell peppers and use them in so many meals.  But they have a high pesticide load and the colored ones are expensive!  I love to see my kids gardening.  One year we planted only 2 or 3 pea plants.  I sent my kids out to harvest peas, and had less than 1/4 cup left over when they were done.  They started to shell them and ended up eating nearly all of them!  LOL 

Well, last year we discovered square foot gardening.  It seemed easy enough.  We decided to try.  The problem was, we sold our house right when we should have been planting things.  We sold it so quickly that we didn’t have everything set on a new place, so we moved in with my parents while waiting on a short sale we were trying to buy.  My parents seemed fascinated with the idea of square foot gardening, so they went out and bought the stuff for 2 boxes and told me I could plant my starts in them along with a few things they wanted to grow.  We didn’t get anything planted until well after it should have been, so we didn’t harvest much.  I also didn’t realize the neighbors tree had grown so much (and they put up a shed!) since I lived there 8 years ago, so the gardens didn’t get enough sun until we moved them a month later.  Oops. 





So this year I am planning on doing much better.  Last year I found a wonderful site that helps you know when to plant things.  It was SO helpful!  This year, the lady who created the site has put her information into two e-books you can purchase.  I had to buy them the first day they were out.  They are great!  And it is very helpful to have the information printed out, and I can refer to it when I’m out working in the garden.  She’s doing a contest for a free e-book right now too, if you’d like to check it out.