Garden work

A new house means a new garden!

The house we moved into is a fairly new house so there is absolutely no landscaping and, while I do miss all of our plants and flowers, it's exciting to think of what we can create on this blank canvas. The current garden work however is not of the flowery, decorate the front of the house kind, but of the nourish my family kind.

We've attempted vegetable gardens in the past. We started with a few pepper plants filling in here and there when the landscaping, of the previous house, was new and looked so empty. A couple pumpkin plants along the walk to the house the year we couldn't decide on, or afford much of, anything to plant there and the price of the you-pick pumpkins seemed to be skyrocketing each fall.

Every spring we would get a little more serious about our planting as the kids got bigger and seemed to take a real interest in watching food grow, but most of what we planted was devoured by bunnies and some mischievous ground hogs.

Eventually we put up a small chicken wire fence with metal stakes and built a couple boxes for raised beds. We invested a bit of time and money into making a decent garden that, we hoped, would keep out the pesky, but small, pests we had. . . It didn't work. We were able to harvest at least a little of what we had planted, but between the rodents and the blight we didn't get much.

This year, with the lessons learned from the past, and some research, we are trying once again. This time our fence is a bit more serious and the beds a bit bigger.

We've learned about fertilizers and prepping the soil before planting and we are giving it a go once again, in a new neighborhood, with new pests.

Um, We're gonna need a bigger fence.