One of my personal joys of this summer has been our family garden. Last summer we Alex put in all the hard work to create the garden beds, install irrigation and build a fence to keep out the critters. This summer, we got to relish in amending the soil and planting our starts. The hardest part was constructing the trellising systems.
We learned quite a lot last year. One of our biggest lessons was to plant things we love to eat and focus our energy there. So, that’s exactly what we did. I planted a larger crop of tomatoes, tons of green beans, more pumpkins {for fun, not food}, and added lettuce and cucumbers to the mix.
Last summer we started with eight strawberry plants. Since then, they have spread so, so much and produced pint after pint of juicy berries early in the summer. Now that we’re to August the berries have relinquished quite a bit, but we’ve been delighted to notice they’re making quite the resurgence lately.
I spent some time amending the soil in our two garden boxes before planting our flowers this spring and we’re really reaping the rewards. One of the flower boxes is filled with flowers that attract pollinators, like bee balm. The kids love to say hello to our bee friends! We have zinnias galore, wispy cosmos and dwarf sunflowers that brighten everything up.
My most favorite part of the garden is going out together as a family and watching the kids enjoy the space, notice the growth, talk to the plants and harvest them. The absolute best, though, was Ben falling in love with the strawberries this summer.
We’re loving the bounty of this incredible experiment!