THIS IS MY 100TH POST!

Hey I can't believe I just happened to check the number, and it was 99!

In honor of my 100th post, I will show you my garden, because I am SO proud to actually finally have succeeded in growing actual vegetables from actual seeds after many failed attempts.

So I'll start with a before picture: this is the edge of my grass, when you go out the back door and look to the left. I've tried planting in this area before but nothing even sprouted. It's way too rocky. So we figured we should build planter boxes, and they could also serve as a nice lawn-edging.

My first task was straightening the edge of the lawn, which I did on a perfect spring morning the day after it snowed and then melted really fast, so the ground was nice and wet. See how pretty and straight I made it?




Here's another pic just in case you weren't able to appreciate the straightness. This is looking toward the house.

Then we built planter boxes out of scrap wood we had (we build everything out of scrap wood) and I painted them with leftover paint (can you tell we were trying to do this cheap?) and coated them with waterproof stuff too.



Then we actually spent some money and bought dirt. We did a combination of garden soil and steer manure . . . I wish I could remember the exact ratio, because it really worked! (We only bought enough for 2 of the boxes, we'll fill the other 2 next year for sure!) And for family night we let the kids help plant the seeds. We planted peas, broccoli, radishes, peppers, and lettuce.



Ten days later . . . sprouts! I was SO EXCITED the morning I discovered these! They're radishes.

The peas and radishes were the most successful. We had fun picking and eating the peas, but the radishes never really got eaten. Jason's the only one who likes them. The lettuce and peppers never even sprouted, so we planted more peas and some zucchini in their places.

I thought I had taken more pics, but this is the only one I have of the thriving plants. This is the broccoli. It grew very nicely all summer, but nothing about it looked broccoli-ish until a few days ago, when . . . .Ta-dah!! Little broccolis! There are only a couple plants like this so far, I hope they

keep going!

And here are the overgrown radishes, we had a couple that got as big as plums!


I'm so happy that we were finally able to grow something. Next year I'll plant tons of peas, some broccoli, cucumbers and TOMATOES! And maybe I'll try out a couple of new things too.