Hello fellow gardeners! My name is Kelly and I’m thrilled to introduce myself as one of the new contributing bloggers here at Zone9Garden. I’m a wife, mother of 3 kids and live in Tampa, FL. I also have a great love for photography and scrapbooking. I have a blog but haven’t been very active with it recently. I’m hoping that this gig as a contributing blogger will give me some structure to get back in the blogging habit again!
We bought our house in May 2010 and one of the first things I did was plant a garden. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. And to demonstrate this fully, please allow me to quote from my first blog post ever from July 5, 2010: Most of my plants (seeds) were started for me by my grandfather earlier in the spring. We planted cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, peppers, watermelon, carrots, basil, oregano, and cilantro. Sadly the carrots didn’t make it, but the cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, and basil show great promise.
Seriously people, I thought I could plant carrots in May? Some of the other choices weren’t too far off but I was putting seedlings in the ground on Memorial Day! Oh yeah, and I planted all this in a single 4’ x 8’ raised bed. Ah, I’m a much wiser Zone 9 Gardener now!
Today there are a total of five raised beds in the garden. I tend to have a more potager style and grow a mixture of vegetables, flowers and herbs. I’ve learned a lot about companion planting and have really tried to plan out my crop locations better. I’ve tried some citrus and berries as well, but given my newbie status at the time there was simply no hope. I’d like to give those another try in the near future when the timing is right. I have a compost bin but that has been totally underutilized as well. Yep, add that to the ever growing things-I-need-to-figure-out-in-the-garden list.
The main reason I started our garden is so that my children could have an idea of where food actually comes from. I wanted them to see the hard work that goes into putting food on our table. I didn’t want them to just think that food comes from the grocery store. Obviously this little backyard garden doesn’t do justice to this lesson, but it’s a start. I also wanted them to be able to really taste food and to appreciate what we could produce. My first garden included the things I thought I should be growing, but now I only plant what we will eat. Sure, I can have a bumper crop of squash because that seems to be something I can grow well, but honestly no one is eating that at my house.
My garden has taken a backseat but I now have a renewed enthusiasm and purpose to get things in order and keep growing on. This weekend I’ll be cleaning up the garden, taking a look at my fall and winter garden plans (I have a much better knowledge of seasonal growing!), and also outlining a few garden projects that have been put off for way too long. I can’t wait!
