The Garden-

I have never been good with plants. It's funny, I like plants, but I've never been successful at keep plants alive for any period of time. However, since we've been here and have been blessed with the promise of a more permanent living arrangement (something I haven't had since I was about 14 years old), I have had this little sprout of a dream to grow my own food.

I wrote several articles on gardening and interviewed many seasoned growers about what it takes to start a garden and I was convinced that I could do it. It's taken a couple months but we have just installed and planted about 15 little plants that will hopefully give us some good food this summer.

We tried to be cheap as possible but it turns out that the cost of a garden still comes with a price tag. Here's the major expenses of starting a garden:

Soil-$40 (a special kind, supplemented and mixed with local soil)
Plants-around $15 or so
Shade-$15 for a 6x3 piece
Wire for mole prevention-$12
Plant food-(hey i need all the help I can get!)-$10
Watering device-$15


So it was about $120 to start this garden. We used recycled wood from a barn that was torn down as well as invasive bamboo to hold the shade up, because our poor little plants were about to die from all the sun they were getting. My hope is that we will be able to keep it up and the up front costs won't be as high next year. Plus, garden veggies are WAY better tasting than store bought vegetables. Here's what's in the garden:

garden beans, basil, yellow squash, swiss chard, spinach, red pepper, sage, eggplant and some tomatoes in a planter.

I want to repeat that I still don't feel like I know what I'm doing because there are so many factors that I'm still learning about with predators, soil types, composting, and taking care of a garden. So I'm just learning as I go along. So far, most things are still alive, and I only have about two pepper plant casualties that were fried by the hot sun.