Home Grown Goodness

Aren't those tiny seeds so cute in those tiny dirty hands?

Here is a little bit about what I have been dreaming about lately.

Home Grown Produce
And lots of it.

I want a vegetable garden with lots of tomatoes, onions, pumpkins, zucchini, cucumbers, yellow squash, corn, bell peppers and carrots.

We got our garden spot all tilled and ready to plant. We bought our seeds and then we put those tiny seeds in the ground. We watered. I always buy my tomatoes in plant form and not seed form. I have not had much luck starting them from seeds. One of the ones I got this year already had blossoms on it. by the time we planted it in the ground it had a tiny tomato. Cute, huh?

Now all of our seeds have come up except the carrots. For some reason we can never get carrots to grow. Sad, I know.

I guess we will be eating baby carrots pre-washed and packaged for another year until we try again.

This is our dirt before we planted anything. It's pretty, huh? I just has to take a picture of the pretty dirt.

We also have a strawberry patch. It needs to be much bigger though. They are doing so well this year. We had tons of blossoms and now we have tons of teeny tiny berries. We have 2 grape vines, but I want more. I want to add raspberries but I need to find a good spot for them. That may have to wait until next year. This year my dream is an orchard.
I Want Fruit Trees
And lots of them

We have a large front lawn and it takes entirely too much time mowing and keeping up with it. It has always been my dream to have lots of fruit trees. Then one day I had a vision, if you will, of my little orchard.

I am going to turn my front yard into an orchard! I figure what is the point of that huge front yard that we just have to mow all the time and the kids can't really play there because it is too close to the road. Plus it will hide our house from the cars driving past. So we are going to get rid of the walnut trees that are there since we are allergic and all the nuts always go to waste. We will plant one row of trees each year. Under the row of trees we will put down that black stuff to keep weeds out and wood chips on top, then curbing along the edges. So by the time we are done we will have strips of lawn to mow and we will not have to go around every tree with the mower. I want cherry trees, apricot, peach, apple, and pears...and plums.

The kids will be able to go outside and just have snacks when all the different fruit is ripe.

Hopefully we will have enough left over to can in the fall. I want to be busy in the kitchen with my kids peeling, slicing, canning all that glorious fruit right beside me.

For now it is just a dream, although we are planning to plant the first row on Saturday. Now to decide what to plant first. How will I ever chose? It will be at least a year until they start producing fruit. I figure as our kids grow so will our little orchard. By the time they are teenagers we will have lots of help with all the trimming, spraying, harvesting, and canning. Not to mention the eating! Oh, yum! I can't wait for this dream to come true!