The green green days of summer!

I'm sure many of you passed this site on your way to Church every Sunday.  Our garden is very visible. 

I love square foot gardening!  I know it's still cold, but really this is the best time to start thinking about your garden.  Don't have one.  Well start thinking about one!  This particular type of garden can take up as little or as much space as you want.  We utilized our unused side yard and got over 80 pounds of potatoes and dozens of peppers, not to mention tomatoes, carrots, beans, etc...  and if you haven't tasted home grown broccoli then you haven't really lived.  I was so shocked at how different it tasted than store bought.   Anyway the point I'm trying to make is you really don't need a lot of space to grow a lot of food.  I also found it was a great way to grow family relationships.  We would have the kids help us in all the different aspects of planting.  It's great one on one time with kids as well.  We let each of our kids pick 2 squares and they got to choose what they planted in them.  It gave them ownership as well as helped with getting them to eat their veggies! 

For our boxes we used scrap lumber that was laying around at my dad's house.  I've been told that lumber yards often have scrap wood.  Don't be afraid to ask around.  You never know what people are wanting to get rid of. 

Mel Bartholomew is the author of Square Foot Gardening.  You can find it at the library.  We chose to use Mel's dirt mixture and made our own dirt since the side yard dirt was rocky and not very good.  I can honestly say I've never weeded my garden because of this.  It's great!!

I hope this gets you thinking about your garden.  If you start making a plan now then when the weather warms up you can put things into action.