Year of the Garden, who’s ready for an update? In an effort to keep our focus on improving our homestead we came up with a little theme. Every year we pick a project to focus on. 2017 was our Year of the Garden (click the link to see the before pictures). As we close on the end of the year, here is my update on how our year went.
Year of the Garden *Update*
For the first half of the year, we had to finish up a few projects and spent time mapping and changing the layout of the garden. So much for setting a focus, right? It was June before we got started. The layout we settled on includes a big garden, pond, lots of trees and fencing. To do all that would cost more money than we are willing to put into that area right now. Plus I love the eclectic look, so it will be best if we piece it together over the next few years.
So Curtis graded out the area, and built the raised beds. The garden bed below is made from a tree that was cut down here years before we moved in, and palm tree trunks that we cut down last year.
Then we planted a few trees; 2 fig trees, 3 moringa trees, 2 ice cream bean trees, a jujube, and an orange tree. We had a sweet potato that spouted in our kitchen, so we planted it in the garden. We planted 200 corn seeds (which was so much fun to watch grow!). There were also some volunteer watermelon plants that provided so many watermelons for us and our chickens.
Last month we also planted zucchini, spaghetti squash, beets, butternut squash, garlic, onions and pumpkin.
The Future Garden
In the future we will have a big pond with a little stream area to play in, all surrounded by big tropical trees. We will plant more shade trees on the west side. We will add some pots for perennial plants. There will also designate an area for each of the kids to have to plant what they want.
We hang out in here in the evenings and pull weeds as a family. That right there is priceless. My kids have already witnessed the miracle of watching the baby watermelon grow, the corn sprout, and it’s only going to get better from here. For our 2018 garden we will be maximizing our garden space. We want to have lots of cantaloupes for the chickens and black soldier flies. We will plant corn again, but this time POPCORN! Grapes, more trees, strawberries, cucumbers are all planned as well.
We didn’t spend a whole lot of time this year getting the garden set up, but we did it. We would not have accomplished it without a goal.
Do you think about yearly goals for your garden or homestead?
Does anybody want to guess what our goal is for next year?
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