Garden: Growing Beautifully

It's been really busy here with visiting family, First Communion, Baptism, school, making soap, the new chickens, the big chickens, the kids and activities, the gardens.
It has been very fast paced and hectic but for the most part lots of fun. One of the most enjoyable parts of the last couple of weeks was getting out to enjoy this beautiful Spring weather.


 Our family garden has really taken off in the last couple of weeks. We have been very excited with the progress and have even begun to taste the success of what we have toiled over. We have been able to harvest several bunches of spinach, the strawberry plants are beginning to explode with lots of little green berries that the kids are anxiously anticipating.




Swiss Chard has also given us some lovely colorful stalks that the kids have enjoyed straight out the garden.

This week we will pick one of our beautiful Romaine Lettuce heads.





The kale is growing by leaps and bounds and soon we will be able to add fresh from the garden kale to our juicing, salads, and future meals.






There are also lots of sprouts to thin that will soon become micro greens, lettuce greens for as long as they last before it gets hot, and hopefully a crop of beets. Sugar Snap peas are reaching up and grabbing onto their trellising, and everything else looks like it is making a great start.

The broccoli is amazing, it's the first time that I have had anything bigger than a sprout come up and manage to make it. Right now we have beautiful dark green leaves, and anticipating seeing flower heads soon. 

So Happy Earth Day to you all. Hope you went out there on this lovely, cool, sunny, Spring day and helped make our Earth a better place to live...

What did you do on Earth Day 2013?

Celebrating Earth Day

Yesterday was Earth Day. In honor and celebration we started on our gardening adventure that is one step closer to becoming more self-sufficient. We spent the whole afternoon outside filling pots and planting our first vegetables and herbs. We used this as an opportunity for school learning about the plant structure and what plants need to survive, grow and produce seeds and fruit. We also started our seed beds for several other vegetables and herbs in order to see how a plant can start out as an itty bitty seed and grow into a big plant(this is science for my preschooler). Now the big question is can we do just as well in pots as in the ground? Stay tuned to see our progress, pictures next week.