Sometime over last year’s long and miserable winter, I decided it would be a good learning experience to have a garden with the girls. They could help me plant the seeds and plants, tend the garden, harvest, etc.. and we could save money and eat fresh veggies all summer sans pesticides. Everybody wins!

Me by the garden just last week - Its such a jungle! (7 months along here)

Grandpa Clemm was out here in April and he built the box for us which was awesome. Having a raised box was my plan to keep rabbits hopefully out.

I know what you are thinking here: “Ummmm, Kerry? Rabbits HOP you know….”

Well aren’t you smart?

Yes they do and I have no idea why I thought 6 inches of wood plank would deter them, but they have not been too much of a pain. Of course, by the time we bought the wood, the seeds, and then the replacement plants when we killed the first round of plants we planted (fine Jamie – you were right! Watering mid day in the hot sun is NOT smart!), I am not sure how much money we ended up saving, but we learned from all our mistakes and next year the CLemm Family Farm should be running at a surplus instead of a deficit.

The good news is that we appear to be quite good at this veggie growing business! We had a constant surplus of inventory around these parts – especially cucumbers. It got to a point where I think our neighbors would see me walking towards their house and immediately retreat inside and lock all the doors in fear that I was bringing them more cucumbers. Next year I think I will plant only one cucumber vine – not 3. And I also learned that 1 Zucchini plant is MORE than enough. Especially for a house where no one even eats zucchini (the zucchini muffins are a huge hit with the girls though!). Hopefully this will open up room for my yellow squash to thrive next year because I had a disappointing turn out with it this year (only got about 5 all summer and its my absolute favorite!). I suspect those pesky cucumbers were really strangling the squashes will to live. Other plants in the garden: Pumpkins, mystery squash (turned out luckily to be some weird form of butternut squash that is quite good), bell peppers, watermelon that had to be pulled and sacrificed for the good of the rest of the garden due to space restraints, sugar peas that never once made it past the back door and into the house because we ate them right off the bush, tomatoes that are still going, and cauliflower that also had to be pulled because it was too attractive to the rabbits.

So here are some pictures of our garden – from day 1 when Molly and I hunkered down on a cold winter day to plant seeds all the way to last week when we could finally harvest the pumpkins and put them out on the front step. I am so proud of how well we did!

Planting the seeds back in April

All lined up and ready to grow in the window for the rest of the winter! Good thing Lilly eats a lot of yogurt (ps: I dare you to make fun of my Edward Cullen Sweet Tarts)

The box that Carl built for us - this was at Lilly's birthday party and the kids loved that box! It was a pirate ship, a coffin, a zoo, etc.. I almost felt bad when we filled it in because they enjoyed playing in it so much!

My little helpers planting all the plants back in May!

And planting the replacement plants (next year I will skip growing them from seed and just buy them anyways) always with my little helper by my side! Turns out she has a green thumb - thank goodness one of us does!

And somehow all that dirt and seeds (okay and some plants I had to buy to replace a few I killed) turned into this!

Our VERY FIRST harvest consisted of one pea pod at the end of June It was delicious!

One weekend's harvest! Can you believe it? On average we picked about 8 cucumbers and 3 zucchini a week!

"WHAAAAAAT? How DARE you imply I am eating the dirt! Clearly I am doing no such thing!"

And now, even though we are having a warm end of the summer (better than we had all actual summer but dont get me started), I am sad to report that it appears the plants are slowing down. We had to pull out the mystery squash and the pumpkin vines because they were dead and it would appear the cucumbers are tired and now only spitting out little deformed cucumbers. Even the zucchini have slowed down, though we are still seeing plenty of tomatoes and bell peppers and we plan to let them produce as long as they will!

Seeing all of this though, the plants dying off and the veggies coming to an end, a rather panicked Molly asked met he other day, “But momma! What will we do for vegetables all winter!??”. And being the beacon of honesty and education that I always am with my children I replied, “Well I guess we just have to pray we don’t all get scurvy!”. But then I added. “Just kidding – we will buy them at target with the rest of our groceries.”.

That backfired on me though because I then had to google scurvy and answer about 30 minutes worth of questions about it.