From Seed to Feed

"The sign of a good gardener is brown knees, not a green thumb."

I loved that quote when I found it. Justin and I have wanted to plant a garden since we got married but haven't been in the position to be able to. This year was an experiment just to see if Justin was as good of a gardener as he is a farmer! Well you'll have to decide for yourself by the pictures at the end of this post. 

We built and planted our garden on April 26. We went to Menard's to get the wood for our raised planter boxes and we ran into a member of the Stake Presidency who I had been friends with for years. Their washing machine had flooded their house so they were remodeling and trying to fix it. We told them what we were doing and they told us that they had a lot of the 2x6 planks leftover from when they remodeled their deck just like what we were going to buy. They were trying to get rid of it and that was exactly what we needed! So we got a lot of wood for free! Win win situation for both of us.  Thank goodness Justin has the tools and the know-how to build these kinds of things for our home. He has done a lot of remodeling in our little living space in the past month. But that's another post.

Justin has a friend who works at the Kraft plant here in Champaign and told Justin that they have lots of huge barrels that they use to transport jalapenos in. Justin had to go and pick them up and we got them for free as well. He turned those big blue barrels into rain barrels to catch all the rain water from our gutters so we wouldn't have to use as much water from the hose. So a few hours of cleaning out the gutters and redirecting the pipes, and we have the start to our irrigation system. Justin then connected the barrels with some hose and fittings and a valve. The black hoses in the pictures that are in the planter boxes are drip hoses. They are connected to the rain barrels and when we want to irrigate (such a farming word), we just open the valve and the water flows into the drip hoses from the barrels. Voila! We have an irrigation system to water our little garden.

So there were a few things we started inside  our house and a few things we bought starters for. 

We bought these for starters 

*On the back left, are our 3 tomato plants-later we bought one more. 

*Front right- 4 Acorn squash plants

May 14 (About 2 weeks after planting)

We looked out the window in the mornings and we were so proud of our little garden that the plants were actually growing! Little did we know what was to come.

This was the irrigation system so you can see it up close. Justin put it up on blocks so that gravity would help pull the water down to the drip hoses since there is no water pressure.

The handy man admiring his handy work!

Mommy, Lexus, and Zayden were out playing in the grass enjoying the sunshine while Daddy worked on the garden.

Such a goofy smile!

May 19 (5 Days later)

We left for vacation on the 25, so this was about the stage we left for our 2 1/2 week vacation...When we came back...IT WAS A JUNGLE!

June 15 (Almost a month later!)  We had no idea we would have a garden that looked like this! Neither of us expected this much success in our garden. It shocked our neighbors and us when we got home!

Front left is our Yellow Crookneck Squash and it took over everything! Our zucchini plants are behind it and they took over the other planter box. Thankfully they are bush plants and not vine plants otherwise they would have been much worse.

Because of the humidity here, we have had a little problem with mold on the squash leaves. We've had to trim a lot of the stems and spray the plants with a milk/baking soda mixture to help improve the  plant's immune system and fight that. It's been a constant battle for the past month. Especially with the leaves close to the soil and under a layer of bigger leaves.

Our first little acorn squash that we were so proud of. 

Zayden enjoys playing with sticks while I weed and work in the garden in the mornings before it gets too hot!

Our first little bell pepper plant. We tried starting these from seed, but they didn't make the cut so we had to buy some starter plants at the farmer's market. We have four of those plants and they are working on producing more peppers!

Justin harvesting out first pepper for Quesadillas!

When we picked that pepper, it looked so big, now it looks a little on the tiny side. 

Zayden really wanted to chew on it. Ha, he thought it would taste good but he made a sour face when he bit into the stem.  We weren't quite fast enough to catch that shot. 

Since Zayden has learned to crawl and get to where he wants to, he's decided that Daddy's grill tools are the best toys. He can't climb stairs yet, so we're glad we aren't fighting that battle.

Some of our squash and zucchini we've harvested.  So far, we have probably harvested 15 zucchini, 12 yellow crookneck, lots of pickles, a plot of radishes, some sugar snap peas, and  3 acorn squash. 

Our  biggest zucchini was a foot and a half long. I cooked it up tonight and made stuffed Zucchini. Yummy! It made 2 dinner meals for us! Stuffed Zucchini

June 25 

Our tomato plants were taller than I was and had outgrown their cages! So Justin built a frame for them to grow up around. We also put trellises for the acorn squash, the watermelon and cantaloupes, the cucumbers, and the peas to grow up on instead of outward and swarming all the other plants.  It's been working great!

Our peas and tomato plants growing up the trellis

July 1 

All of these produce pictures are from today! I went out after church and guess what I saw...

One of my tomatoes turning red!

My large almost ready acorn squash, that I am trying to harden off so I can store it for the winter!

Lots and lots of sweet peas that are going to be harvested and froze this week!

My softball size watermelon!

My pickling cucumbers. We already made a batch of dill pickles last Sunday and they were fantastic! One jar is already eaten...one guess as to who was the culprit! 

A bigger bell pepper than before! So the longer you leave a bell pepper on the vine, the different colors it changes. First it's green, then it turns yellow and red!

More pickles and another watermelon! 

I also saw the starts of little cantaloupes and some regular cucumbers. 

Our carrots, green beans, bell peppers, and onions are still growing strong! I love this summer project. I highly recommend a garden for a first time mommy who has free time but not enough to work at a job and wants something to take her mind off of being mommy for a little bit. It's been a wonderful stress reliever and really fun to do! I think this will be a yearly occurrence for the Maughan family. 

  2012 Garden

Some people have asked us if we've used miracle grow or something like that but we haven't. It's been hot and humid here and we used compost and topsoil in the garden. Nothing fancy or special. But it's been the best combination for our garden. We also tried square foot gardening so the entire garden was sectioned off into square feet, you can kind of see the dark green yarn we used to do it with in the earlier pictures before the plants took over. It's been so fun to do and I'm glad that we made the commitment to grow one this year! Stay tuned for more updates on our garden! We are contemplating a few changes over the next few weeks...