A garden for Mom...

Today we are taking a little detour from the physical well being and looking at the nutritional well being. Over the holidays my mother and I were talking about how they had filled in the pool and how great it was to have a big yard again. Both of us are going through some personal changes in regards to our eating habits and overall health. This lead us to talk about putting a garden in the back yard this spring. I plan on documenting this adventure here.

We're staring to plan...
I got an email for mom yesterday asking about the garden and what I thought we should put in it. Immediately visions of award winning vegetables sprang into my mind. And as I walked through my imaginary garden with blue ribbons hanging from every plant, I realized there were just carrots... I had no idea what I wanted to plant, let alone what would be a good starter plant. And then there was the issue of starter plant vs. seeds and how big was our garden going to be? and when do we plant? what could be planted with what? how much space did we need? Oh boy.... We will not be deterred! We will have a garden of awesome! That's why they made the internet right?

First things first...
What are we going to plant? We want a vegetable garden. Check. Well searching the interwebs I found what's called a zone map. It looks like this...

Yeah, I might have to get back to you about that hot mess... Basically we live in zone 6 and or 7. So what dose that mean? Once you know where you live (I learned this once in kindergarten, never thought I would have to learn it for kindergarden) you can find out what plants and vegetables will do well in your zone. So back into the endless-ness of goggle and we find some one has already come up with the idea of sticking plants in the ground to yield food!! OMG! And they ever did a nice chart to show what they learned. Little puffy heart for them <3 www.veggieharvest.com

 

I love sweet potatoes!!!  But why does spinach get planted three times? At least I'm in a slightly better place now knowing what I can plant and roughly when. So there's the plan, figure out what we want and grow it, and here's the yard...

(photo by Jessy, who could not be bothered to go outside to take it ;P )