We have been gardening for about five years now, and every year we add something new to the garden.
When we first started gardening we did one year in the ground and didn’t have very good luck with anything that we had put in. So the next year we made two raised beds. We gardened in those ones and also put some plants in the ground, we did it this way this year to try out the raised beds before we went all in, to make sure it was going to work out for us. The raised beds did amazing this year the garden in the ground not so good. So that was the deciding factor that raised beds was the best way for us to garden.
The following year we added three more raised beds and did all of our gardening in them. Over the last few years we have added a few more beds each year. We are now up to 17 beds in our garden.
We try to grow a year’s worth of food for our family. We eat things straight from the garden when it is ready to harvest, then we will freeze or can anything extra so we can use them in the winter when we can’t grow in the garden.
We live in zone 6a, our growing season is usually may – September. Sometimes we can go til October. We start all of our own plants. We will be starting making my plan and deciding what plants we want to grow and going thru my seeds and deciding what to order for this season. We will look thru many catalogs and get my orders ready.
We grow cool weather crops, warm weather crops and heat loving crops, and saturated to incorporate more flowers for pollination last year. We also have some fruit trees and vines around our farmstead. We plan on doing more flowers in our garden this year. Makes my garden pretty and its great for the bees to pollinate all my veggies.
Here is a list of some of the crops that we grow and have great luck every year.
Our cool weather crops include
- Broccoli
- Cauliflower
- cabbage
- onions
- potatoes
- carrots
- lettuce
- spincah
- celery
summer crops include
- tomatoes
- pumpkins
- corn
- summer squashes
- Beans
- Sweet potatoes
- peppers
- cucumbers
Herbs
- *dill
- cilantro
- chives
- parsley
- oregano
I am excited to see where this garden season will do. I am anxious to get started with starting my seeds soon and watching everything grow and being able to use what we grow and preserving all the extras for winter use. I will have another blog describing how we use and perseve all of our garden harvests.