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Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Planting our Victory Garden

I've always wanted to have a green thumb & grow a garden. I'm no expert & can't say that I'm really any good at it but I try. I've never tried to grow anything that would result in us eating any of the products but this year, I have decided to tackle my dream. Why not?

There seems to be a resurgence of victory gardens & I'm joining the movement. Cheesy, maybe. Worth the trouble, we'll have to see. The fun we had putting the plants in our new garden, worth it again & again & again.

See, I decided to make this a family event. Why? B/c I want my kids to start learning about the world in general, starting in our backyard. Off to Home Depot I went. I bought a few veggies, nothing too crazy, being that it is our 1st garden. Then we go the kids ready for outside. Lots of mosquito repellent now that the heat has arrived.

Meme, Abu, Oma & Katy were over hanging out when we started the project. The kids were so excited!


They each wanted their own tool & loved the wheelbarrow.


Sofi was hard at work, helping me.





The kids really got in to it, crouching down like Mommy & putting plants in the ground.


One of our cherry tomato plants.


Some lettuce!


Our cucumber plant, 1 of 4.


The finished product!


We will hopefully be growing the following:

1. Tomatoes (regular & cherry)
2. Onions (sweet white & yellow)
3. Cucumbers
4. Bottleneck yellow squash
5. Lettuce (regular & Romaine)
6. Banana peppers
7. Carrots
8. Pumpkin

I promise to show the "fruits" of our labor!

9 comments:

Andrea said...

wow! you've done better than me. i've been talking about planting a garden for a few years now and still haven't done it. our yard isn't suitable for planting (too many roots) so we would have to build an above ground garden. but i'm REALLY wanting a strawberry bed! i love them so much!
congrats on the garden. it looks great and i love how the kids helped so much!!

Jennifer said...

I feel quite dumb for asking, but I would like to state that I did go to Wikipedia.

What is the difference between a victory garden and just a normal (food) garden? Is there one, or is it just different terminology for them? (I'm just wondering, because where I'm from in Manitoba, we call (food) gardens 'gardens' and if they have flowers in them, they're just 'flower gardens'.)

This may just be a "different places calling the same thing by different names" thing, in which case, I am fascinated!

You'll have to keep us updated on the garden's progress, btw. I'm wondering if you'll have to fight to keep the kids from over-loving it!

Valerie said...

We just planted our garden recently as well. Sounds like you maybe haven't done one in a while. Lettuce fresh out of the garden is awesome! You have to stay on top of it though. Once the plants get too big they get woody and shoot up like crazy. You can plant multiple crops of lettuce during the summer. Of course some summers we fall behind and barely manage to control our first crop. Good luck to your garden. I hope you get lots of great stuff out of it this summer.

Astrid said...

I think the term "victory garden" is just a coined term that my hubby got stuck in my head, LOL!

Jennifer said...

I really like it! I want to start using that term.

Tonya said...

What a cute family project. And for such a cute family! There's so much cuteness!

Anonymous said...

The "Victory Garden" term came from WW2 I believe. Everything was being rationed to people to support the war. You couldn't go to walmart and buy whatever you wanted. You were given ration tickets, then you used those tickets to be able to buy so much of certain items.

Being limited on what you could buy, people raised extra food in their "Victory Gardens". They wanted the war to be victorious, so it and the rationing would end.


-Johnson triplet daddy

Astrid said...

Thank you for the explanation JTD. I knew it had to do w/ the war & rationing & I know we aren't in those kind of timnes but it is still a neat name for a neat project.

Unknown said...

What a great family project!