From Lawn to Garden: Getting Rid of the Last bit of Lawn for the Spring

It's hard to believe our growing season has for the most part come to an end. We still have some potatoes that I'm experimenting with growing in a container and I'm curious to see if we will get any since it's colder now.

Just because our harvest has almost ceased doesn't mean our work has. If you would like to begin a garden next year, START NOW! That was one of our biggest regrets this year- that we hadn't had this idea to transform our yard into a vegetable garden. If we had, I believe more of our yard would have been able to be converted and more nutrients put into the soil well ahead of time. So, we are trying Back to Edens methods as much as we can. We have a large area to cover and were very grateful to our dairy farming friends for letting us come and get some au natural fertilizer-- what a huge blessing to add this into our soil! Alas, it would take me several trips to cover our entire garden, but some is much better than none. We laid down newspapers, the manure, and then a mulch. We were hoping for wood chips and despite calling tree companies and going to home improvement stores, couldn't get our hands on any. But again, we are doing more than we did last fall and hopefully we will see healthier soil next year.

Here are some pots that produced poorly so we are even strengthening the soil in them as well. I wanted to show this because even if you have a patio garden or do strictly boxed gardens, you still need to put some nourishment back into your soil. You can use rabbit, chicken, cow, or any farm animal's manure really as they are all good sources of nitrogen.

As I mentioned in the title, we are converting more of our tiny yard into growing spaces. We removed our pond and will have a nice fertile area for next spring. Very excited as once the pond was out, we saw how much more land was there than it looked like. We also brought forth a smaller box frame and some pots in the hopes that they will kill the grass under them this winter and we can grow and expand more. Moving grass is a LOT of work, but this should help us out. You could also begin to cover your lawn with cardboard and leaves NOW and that will help you convert your yard (or some of it) into growing space next year without so much back labor.

In the rear of our shed we had these boxes last summer.

They have been moved to the front of the shed to a patch of grass we never got to this summer. Our hopes are that they will once again kill off some of the grass and make it easier to clear the area this spring. If they do, they will move up to the old pond area and grow lettuces there and once again, kill off the last few areas of grass.

Now, the area that used to hold the boxes (in the rear of the shed) has been cleared with minimal work from us this week. We covered the ground with cardboard, manure, and mulch to prepare the area even more since it used to be a stone driveway! We moved the cucumber trellis over and will have our cucumbers growing in the rear of the bed and then another smaller fruit in the front-- although I think swiss chard would do awesome here! We will see.

In the old cucumber bed which was actually very small bed wise last year-- we dumped dead plants all summer under the trellis to prepare that soil (which was also a part of the former stone driveway). We just cleared out the weeds this week, turned the soil, and will be adding cardboard and some leaves soon to help prepare this large area for growing next summer. Perhaps our beans will go in this year although I need to check our crop rotation guide and see what will do best in this corner.

The blueberries are blessing us with some lovely fall foliage and the strawberry plants have grown to a nice healthy size. Hopefully next summer we will enjoy the fruits of our patience and tending. We have plans to add cantaloupe or honeydew next year and are looking forward to supplying a lot of our fruit as well as vegetables.

Now, you may be wondering if all the hard work is worth it. Yes-- so very much!! We are still pulling onions and pretty much at least two meals a day we are still enjoying at least one thing from the garden in our meals. Whether it be salsa, tomato sauce, frozen peas, vegetable broth, veggie soup-- the list really does go on, but YES it has been so worth it! It cut back on our grocery bill tremendously last year and to be honest, it was a harder year as we had to put more time in to preparing the ground and deal with lots of rain and cooler temps than what is normal. We are already looking at our seeds for next year-- and we saved lots of our own which will be exciting to see them grow and produce next summer. We are going to be using lots of Baker Creek seeds this year as man of theirs preformed super well.

So, can I encourage you to try and grow more? Expand and produce more of your own food? It is such a rewarding experience! Do you have questions? We'd love to help-- or do you want to share what you do in the fall to prepare for the next spring?

From Lawn to (Yes We did it!!) Vegetable Garden

I feel like we can celebrate God's goodness and faithfulness in providing through our backyard garden. What used to be a backyard of holes and weeds is now a productive food source and its pretty darn cool!

We have been enjoying being out back so much! We grill homemade pizza and eat out on the patio several times a week.

The garden has blessed us with pickling cucumbers in abundance which is awesome! These were something we needed to make our own pickles and relishes as the majority on store shelves come with yellow dye and sugars and some other odd and ends. Our homemade ones fill the fridge, pantry, and freezer (and yes, you can freeze pickles if its to hot to can when you have them in abundance).

My husband's favorites are the bread and butter while I'm a dill pickle girl myself.

Another cool thing we have been blessed to experience is seed saving. So far we have snow peas and cucumbers saved. This photo was taken last week of a lettuce plant I let bolt and just today I collected the puffy white heads that contained the seeds and have stored them as well.

Okay, this is a freaking garden miracle for the northern east coast-- we grew an artichoke from seed!!!!!!!! I was doubtful it would even grow since these are pretty much only grown in California but my husband wanted to just see. And wow, just wow! I think the cooler summer helped it develop and grow.

Now to split it 6 ways! Ha!

Our carrots were another crop I was apprehensive about and we have pulled some crazy freakish looking carrots up but also a good amount that look straight and narrow. So that gives me hope too that our soil is beginning to loosen up and enable them to grow better.

Our pickling cucumbers did take a hit while we were away and they snapped the trellis twine and we had to restring them up but this week we were back to regular production and pickling.

The tomatoes are very lovely-- so neat to grow heirlooms as you get some mammoth looking freakishly shaped fruit! Its very cool! I do wish we had gone with a different canning variety as ours is a bit on the small side. Also, very strange but our tomatoes have really stopped flowering and what I mean is we don't have fruit growing throughout the plant-- just really on the lower levels. Normally I get them all over so again, not sure if this is the cooler summer or heirloom characteristics, but anyway we are still picking these daily and have made sauce for spaghetti twice and pizza once and our hope is we can freeze some too. The fall plants have been planted and here is some cabbage coming along. I have it surrounded by egg shells to deter the slugs and little caterpillars that seem to like these and so far they've been left alone.

Our beans are just gloriously going all over the place.

The purple pole beans are amazing in flavor! Our regular cucumbers are doing well. You can see behind them we have dumped all the old pea plants so they can directly break down back into the soil. We will be layering some newspaper, manure, and woodchips there soon to prepare this area to grow next spring.

The zucchini have been eh. We are getting 1-2 a week but considering we have five large plants I was expecting more. Again, not sure if its because we planted these later or because theyre in the boxes, but next year I may order a different variety or from a different supplier.

We estimate the corn to be between 10-12 feet at this point. It's ginormous! We have about ten ears growing so hopefully we will actually get some corn which would be amazing!

Here is a little bean tee-pee that was getting attacked by rabbits so it's a little late to the game but producing flowers so we should have more beans soon.

We let a radish go to seed and it has produced tons of pods! The pods are actually edible and the kids have enjoyed a few but they are too spicey for me.

The swiss chard is still going strong and if I could tell people to plant one thing, this is it! It keeps producing, is edible cooked and in salads, freezes like spinach, and it's pretty easy to grow as well!

And heres the family again finishing up their dinner while I took the pictures. See all the pretty sunflowers? They're drawing bees in for us!

And they make pretty pickings too!

So, that's a month long overdue update but it's so nice to be out there growing, picking, and yes, still planting! We are learning what worked well, what we'd like to try next year (velour beans are on my list for sure), and how to keep turning the last bits of lawn into more garden!

From Lawn to Garden: Post 13-- Beginning to see the Fruits of all our Labor

We have been insanely busy with summer and the garden and its been awesome because we've been together for the ride and loving (almost) every minute of it! I did take pictures of our garden two weeks ago that I meant to share but then our computer was being funny and I couldn't share them, but to give you an idea of what was going on then here we are.. or were...or whatever:

Now, we picked our first batch of onions about three weeks ago and they have been curing and drying. I just snipped the tops off and they are drying out for the last week or so and then will be stored. We have a second batch going and soon we will be planting more for the fall. We did sets for the white and red onions and I'm happy with how they turned out. Our green onions we did from seeds and they are almost ready to be enjoyed fresh!

We are harvesting carrots, peas, and swiss chard on an almost daily basis. Every time I think, "This will be the last week of the snow peas for sure..." I am pleasantly surprised when they just keep on producing. I am almost soooooo happy we did the swiss chard since our spinach was a bust so far and the swiss chard just keeps on producing!

Our pickling cucumbers are doing really well and we have about 8-10 cukes that will be picked by the end of the week to be made into our first jar of refrigerator pickles.

I am positively giddy over the tomatoes and cannot wait for the first red one to be enjoyed. For now though the plants just keep growing and producing more fruit which is very exciting in and of itself.

Our pole beans are flowering and in august hopefully we will be swamped with beans! I can't wait since fresh beans from the garden taste unbelievably yummy! I love how some of the beans and grape vine have started to intertwine-- it gives it such a wild earthy feel.

Our zucchini is coming along-- although some of them are turning yellow which is odd since we planted black zucchini. Hmmm.

Our corn was knee high and then some by the fourth of july so we are excited to see if we get any from this sometimes tricky and finicky crop. Keep on praying!

And there you have it-- some of the highlights of whats growing. One of the nice things is we planted herbs throughout the garden so now as I weed I am delightfully intoxicated by different aromas which adds a slight delight to a never ending task. What's growing in your garden? What's your favorite recipe for pickles?