LSince this blog is about saving money I thought I would share our garden. (insert pic) when we moved out to North Carolina in 2011 we rented an apartment in a huge complex, we love our apartment and while it does have an outside area it gets zero direct sunlight. I grew up gardening, Eric and I have had a garden of some sort since the first summer we dated. The first year it was in a raised flower bed at the 50 year old house we were renting and we grew tomatoes and peppers. The next year we were in a hundred year old house and grew a few things in pots and tried hanging tomatoes and failed horribly, the next summer before we moved out to North Carolina we planted a small garden in a few pots and one of those raised kiddie pools. We got a late start that year and moved early August so we didn't see very much for us efforts or expenses. Last year around December I was reading about gardens and stumbled across a post on community gardening-that was new to me, I had never heard of such a thing. I did some research and found that they are becoming pretty popular in cities and even smaller towns and even better a city recreation center about a mile from ur apartment was starting one. I immediately signed Eric and I up for the first informational meeting where we paid our $15 annual fee. For such a low fee we couldn't pass it up. We got a 4'x22' raised garden and as an added bonus they hosted planting parties and even provided lots of free seedlings and seeds as well as guidance for inexperienced gardeners. Last year we loosely based our planting off of the square foot gardening method and while we did have some issues we were overall pleased with the outcome and had a great yield. I froze so many tomatoes that I am still pulling them from the freezer!
Anyways on to this year, I will admit I didn't quite have the time to plan out this years garden and pretty much completely missed out on cool weather veggies (except lettuce, spinach and radishes) but I have no doubt that we will once again have a fantastic turnout. This years decided to set a goal of 200lbs of produce from our garden, I am not sure if we can reach that goal but I sure hope so.
Here is what's already planted
Tomatoes : 4 varieties for a total of 7 plants
Peppers: 3 varieties for a total of 10 plants
Lettuce:4 rows of leaf lettuce (4' rows)
Spinach : 1 row
Radishes: 1 row
Bush beans: 6 hills
Onions: 16 square feet of onion sets
What still needs to be planted
Cucumbers
Carrots
Squash (1 plant only!)
More beans (probably pole beans)
What has been harvested
April ?? : 8lb of carrots ( these were a surprise, we planted them in the fall after Charlie was born and never checked on them!! They were huge)
May 4: 8 oz of radishes
May 8: 7oz of radishes & 7oz of lettuce
Total: 9lb 6oz
Lettuce from today's harvest. I trim lettuce with scissors so it will grow back in a couple of weeks!
Carrots from earlier in the season
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