Farmer Sam
pamelamyers | May 3, 2014
I decided that I wanted to expand the garden bed at the side of the house where we normally grow our tomatoes. It is a great place for growing since there is so much sun, but the bed is small, very rectangular, and thus, not aesthetically appealing, and the tomato plants always wind up smashed up against the house, bumping into the air conditioner. Frankly, it’s a mess. Mark agreed we should expand the bed and one day, after he mowed, we got to digging. There was a lot to dig out, and it was a long weekend of digging up sod, replanting it around our yard, and preparing the soil. Sam absolutely loves digging in the dirt and looking for worms and bugs so she dove right in.
We had the bed pretty well cleaned up, and Mark asked me how I’d feel about raised beds. I love the idea! And since he was willing to build them, I said, let’s go for it. Mark read up what he needed to know on the Internet, and off to Home Depot he went (a multitude of times…that darn Home Depot, you can’t ever go just once). He made us the most amazing cedar beds to plant in. We made our plans for what veggies we wanted to try and couldn’t wait to get going. Sam wanted cucumbers (one of her favorites) and she asked for carrots, but it is a little late in the season to be starting carrot seeds, so maybe next year.
We did buy a lot of plants though, and Sam put on her Dora the Explorer gardening gloves and got digging!
She actually was a big help, digging holes and carefully patting the plants into the dirt.
Here she is planting one of her cucumbers!
Dirty gloves are a sign of a hard day’s work, right Sam?
We all had a good time planting and feeling like farmers! It was exhausting though. Next year, it will be so much easier.
Here is the finished product! Now let’s just hope we get a lot of good weather, and have some luck. I am so excited to eat veggies fresh from our own garden.
This is the smaller bed, that is 2 feet by 3 feet. It has strawberries, cucumbers, some red lettuce, onions, cilantro, and lemon thyme.
The larger bed is 5 feet by 3 feet and has Beefsteak tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, red bell peppers, basil, broccoli, onions, red lettuce, and baby spinach. We also planted some catnip in a pot for Zephyr since we had to dig up all the old catnip that used to be in the ground. I found some citronella plants too, and since we are planning on buying a fire pit this summer, I thought it would be a good idea. Wish us luck!
