Gardening - Back to the Beginning

Spring time is almost here. The vast sunshine we've had all week tells me so; along with the near 80 degree temperatures today, the little buds on our Bradford pear trees, the bright green weeds waking from their slumber, and the dandelions stretching upward to the sky. Sigh.

Spring time heralds in a new season of gardening and yard work. Tony and I have already spent time outdoors planting new gardenia bushes, lots of peas, as well as starting a new compost pile. We also invested in some of our very own garden tools and new gloves for the both of us. Mine are pink and girly of course. It is just the beginning of our third little garden and we are dreaming big. 

But before I dive into all the details of our third garden, I thought it would be nice to share how this adventure in gardening all began and why we will continue to pursue and cultivate four green thumbs. :) You see, we are now nearing our sixth year of marriage, and what a joy it has been. Upon our marriage, we moved onto some old farm land that had been "farmed out" of a lot of its nutrients. Grass was planted and some hedges were planted along the front of the house. For the first couple years are yard was just that simple. It was mowed about once every two weeks and we thought that was too much work. :)

July 2005

In 2007 the grass we used to have all died out and we were left with a great variety of weeds. You can kind of see that in the picture below. Around the same time, Tony's parents gifted us with "tree money" ~ so we planted 2 Bradford Pears, a Japanese Maple, and a Tulip Tree.

June 2007

Shortly after this picture was taken, we literally killed nearly everything in the yard--on purpose. Have you ever heard of a product called KillzAll? Well, it does just that.

September 2007

 Our sweet niece rightly called our yard a desert! Couldn't have said it better myself. It still surprises me that our trees and monkey grass are still alive. Although I'm very confident that the spraying of deadly chemicals into the soil seriously stunted their growth. Imagine that. :) During those years, we truly {and wrongly} believed that the only worthwhile pursuit was a life of "event evangelism". Our calendar, budget, and database of pictures reflected that belief. From that worldview sprouted many misconceptions -- one of those being our view of work, specifically in regards to this post, yard work (or the lack there of). We wanted a pretty yard that maintained itself (aka: no work).

So we planted clover throughout our whole yard! :) We had read that clover only grows about 5 inches high, meaning that it didn't have to be mowed often. And as an added bonus, it replenishes nitrogen levels in the soil {very providential seeing that we had pretty much just stripped our soil of the little nutrients it had}. The clover grew beautifully in parts of the yard .... but not in others.

Late September 2007

May 2008

 So, it still required mowing. :) And because the clover holds so much moisture, it was actually harder to mow.

2008 was a very, very big year for us. That's the year we learned a lot about true nutrition -- feeding our bodies the whole foods that it needs; up to that point we had been consuming the standard american diet. God also graciously convicted us of our pessimistic, Pharisaical perception of life. We realized, that as Christians our faith in Jesus is to impact every single area of our lives; the way we work, eat, celebrate, spend time with family, wash the dishes, worship, evangelize, mow the yard, etc.We realized that our whole life is a witness of God's great redemptive grace. And in that truth we rejoice muchly!! It's the year we discovered some of our favorite ministries (Mars Hill Church and Vision Forum) and even more-so began to embrace our times of togetherness and with family. This is the year that Tony started back to school and that I became a full-time homemaker. A big year filled with many changes.

Somewhere along the way we learned of the Dervae's family -- specifically their video titled "Homegrown Revolution." They are able to grow over 6,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables a year - on only 1/10th of an acre. Watch and see...



Very motivating, huh?. :) This all naturally led up to the start of our very first little garden in 2009. The consumption of fresh fruits and veggies is vital to everyone's well being. And how much better can it get than from your very own backyard?

Our Little Garden 2009
We started out with just one 8x2 box, which quickly expanded to a section of earth beside it. We had ordered all heirloom seeds. Much of my transplants actually died because I did not understand the concept of "hardening off." Lesson was learned the hard way. :) We built our shed, had our first infestation of grasshoppers, and lots of pretty marigolds. The corn and bush beans were a complete failure. Peas, arugula, herbs, and zuchinni all did fairly well. Tomatoes and cucumbers did okay. By August, most of the garden was cleaned up and covered with hay for the winter.

Our Little Garden 2010
Heirloom seeds were ordered and planted directly in the ground. I didn't plant as much as the previous year. We had a variety of herbs, lots and lots of arugula, a good harvest of peas, some eggplants, and lots of tomatoes. I kind of threw all spacing instructions out the window and overall didn't put as much effort into the garden. I think it was mostly due to our insane schedule last year {it really was a busy year}. The local farmers market was very good to us though. In the garden, I adopted some fence posts for my tomatoes to grow up on to, didn't put any ground covering down, and left it to itself most of the Summer. But even without me, it did fairly well. And I was still picking tomatoes, eggplants, and herbs well into the fall.   

So that is the beginning of our little garden adventure and I look forward to sharing our progress with year number three. :) Happy gardening to all my dear readers!!