From Lawn to Garden (Part 2)

Hello and this was quite the frigid week we had as we did a little more (inside) planning for the garden! The first part of our journey is here and we received a lot of good honest questions. We have thought this out and for those of you who were concerned where our kids would play I can promise you that we spend most of our summers hopping form one park to another or swimming at grandmas. Our yard borders elderly neighbors who don't always appreciate the noise and daily occasional ball that goes into their yards. This is maximizing our space to create our own urban farm. These are actually en vogue on the east coast so who knew? The nice thing is we have been soaking up youtube videos and watching them grow and make mistakes and it's been very helpful. Our goal isn't to just grow to fee our family for the summer but well into the rest of the year. Last summer we did a lot of berry picking and just today we used up the last bag in oatmeal and the kids were quite downhearted. They're looking forward to having some more in our freezer next year (and the jam I can lasting longer than a week!).

We have been reading up on gardening as much as possible. This is our research and planning time as come spring and summer and fall we will be busy in the garden... I hope.

The kids have been busy playing in the snow and stamping lots of moisture down into the frozen ground. Well, I don't even know if that's true or accurate, but for their sake, lets just say that's whats happening! We were also asked what we were planting and here are the seeds we ordered from incredible seeds: 1 ea. National Pickling Heirloom Cucumber Seeds 1 ea. Truckers Favorite White Heirloom Corn Seeds 1 ea. Chantenay Heirloom Carrot Seeds 1 ea. Golden Acre Heirloom Cabbage Seeds 1 ea. Green Sprouting Calabrese Heirloom Broccoli Seeds 1 ea. Purple Peacock Heirloom Bean Seeds 1 ea. Blue Lake Heirloom Pole Bean Seeds 1 ea. Green Globe Heirloom Artichoke Seeds 1 ea. Thyme Seeds - Winter Thyme 1 ea. Oregano Seeds - Greek Oregano 1 ea. Dill Seeds - Mammoth Dill 1 ea. Cilantro / Coriander Seeds 1 ea. Chive Seeds - Onion Chives 1 ea. Basil Seeds - Fino Verde Basil 1 ea. Straight Eight Heirloom Cucumber Seeds 1 ea. Yugoslavian Red Heirloom Lettuce Seeds 1 ea. Paris Island Cos Heirloom Lettuce Seeds 1 ea. Evergreen Hardy White Onion Seeds 1 ea. Mammoth Melting Heirloom Snow Pea Seeds 1 ea. Serrano Chili Heirloom Hot Pepper Seeds 1 ea. Purple Beauty Bell Pepper Seeds 1 ea. Sweet Cherry Pepper Seeds 1 ea. Bloomsdale Heirloom Spinach Seeds 1 ea. Black Krim Heirloom Tomato Seeds 1 ea. Aunt Lucy Heirloom Tomato Seeds

My little snow bunnies and I are anxiously awaiting our package of seeds to arrive! In the meantime, we picked up some pea seeds at a local farm store as Incredibles had already sold out and I believe we still have to pick up some flower seeds too as we would like to attract a lot of bees to the yard even before our vegetables start flowering.

And I did pick up a pretty hat holder and I am envisioning us filling it with 6 floppy summer hats... although I'm sure it will be more like 30 ball caps, but a girl can dream right? Next step, well, hopefully our seeds will arrive this week as they have shipped already. We also need to begin mapping things out. We might start some spinach and broccoli indoors soon as well so maybe we can squeeze a spring and fall crop in this year... we shall see but we are optimistic! So, what have you been able to grow amazingly well in your garden and what was a flop?