Garden beginnings

I forgot to post this picture, way back in May. This was the beginning of our garden this year. We live in a semi-rural area, and some of our friends have acres and acres to play with - homeschool paradise! :) We do not. We have a village size yard, and we've carved a corner of it into a garden, with three rectangular slightly raised beds and a re-claimed materials compost pile (all stuff the previous owners had left in the yard - not pretty but a great lesson in being good stewards of what we have, and not making more garbage than we need to).

Last year was our first year attempting a garden, and we did a tiny bit of research before we started, but learned more by trial and error. We took what we did learn and applied it to this year's garden choices: no corn, few carrots (not enough sun). Lots of beans (did great last year and we love them) and a fair amount of lettuce (did well last year too). We also attempted a few more tomato plants, putting them in different spots, attempting to get as much sun as possible.

It's been a great learning experience for the girls (and for me too). We've been taking problems, like not having tons of sun in our garden nook, and trying to work a solution together. The girls helped remember what did well last year and we planted more of that. They also thought that perhaps since the plants aren't able to make tons of food b/c of the shadiness, maybe if we fertilize better that would help - we'll see if that pans out - we applied composted manure and have been adding compost from our pile. Sooo, it's been a good study in gardening, and also in making hypotheses and all of that fun stuff.

Additionally, my little bargain hunters are excited about the money we can save if the garden does well and we don't need to buy lots of veggies, so there's a lesson in financial stuff as well.

Homeschooling - I like that because we are doing life together we really do have moments to learn, and to really prepare the kiddos for the rest of life. Good stuff. Glad we're able to do it....