We put in a little 4×8-foot garden this year. It was my first attempt at growing anything other than a few houseplants back in Florida. I really didn’t know what to expect, but I did a little reading online & with library books and went to it. I figured a raised-bed would work best for us, since it would be small and manageable. Plus, we have super hard, thick clay in our backyard – it would have taken a LOT of work & amendments to make it garden-ready soil. So we dug up the sod, nailed together a couple of 1×8 boards, laid out a layer of newspaper, and filled the box with bought dirt.

I got tomato seedlings, but we planted everything else from seed: peas, beans, mesclun, cucumber, carrots, squash, and canteloupe. A bunny came along and did a number on the squash and cukes, but I replanted the cucumbers and they came back up. Then my friend gave us an okra plant, a pumpkin plant, and a zucchini plant to fill in the empty spaces.

Compared to my parents’ garden, we’ve got nothin’! But we’ve eaten a few cups of lovely fresh peas (which is funny, because if they’re cooked, Jonas says “I can’t eat these, they are Yuck,” but outside with bugs and dirt? They are apparently delicious) and three little grape-sized tomatoes and one medium tomato. We’ve got bitty green beans that aren’t ready to pick yet, and blooms on two of the three remaining cucumber plants as well as the zucchini.