Garden Planning Adventures

I've been growing fruit for a few years.  I felt like it was an easy way to ease into gardening.  Raspberries and blackberries are basically weeds so I knew they'd do alright.  We have had a couple of great years and now I am ready to expand into vegetable gardening.

I thought that I would start a new blog about my gardening adventures, but then I found this old blog with some great older posts and I figured that I'd just revive it!  So, I'm back at it!  I won't just focus on gardening.  I'll also keep posting about our life and adventures in Indiana...but around the time that the garden work picks up, my blog will probably have a lot about that!


Here is Pete and Z in front of one of our fruit boxes.



We've had pretty good success with our fruit and I'm ready to branch out to veggies!

I thought that I'd take a moment to pop up a level and share why I want to garden.

1) Reduce food miles and our carbon footprint
In the USA, food travels 1,500 miles+ before it hits our plates.  The way we farm with all these huge machines, pesticides, is taking a huge toll on our planet.  And then there are the containers to hold these food, usually from plastics, which come from fossil fuels.

2) Eat more cleanly
When you are farming on a smaller scale, it's easier to manually pick the bugs off your plants rather than spray everything and kill the good microbes of your soil along with the "bad bugs" eating your plants. Also, the sooner you eat food after you pick it, the healthier it is.

3) Connect with our food.
I want my kids to understand what "real food" is and that food comes from the ground not from a store.  I want them to understand (and me too, for that matter) that the closer food looks like something from the ground or directly from the animal, the healthier it probably is.  I also want them to know that carrots are not just orange.  They can be purple or white or red.  I want them to know that tomatoes can be big, small, green, orange, round, or oval.  Also, I hope that participating in the growing and harvesting of our food, my kids will be more willing to try new veggies.  We'll see how that goes.

4) Get Outside
I work from home.  Between that and the therapies for the boys, it's sometimes hard to prioritize getting outside.  My goal with the garden this year is to spend 15 minutes every day out in it.  This might be weeding, watering, de-bugging or harvesting.  If there is extra time, I can just sit and enjoy or teach the kids about the garden.

Do you garden?  If you do, why?  If you don't, but are thinking about it...what is calling you?