While I have always loved gardening, I must admit that I have not done much gardening for the last several years. In truth, life was too busy, and there is nothing worse than planting a garden and not having the time to tend to it. However, due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, I found the time to revive my long lost love for gardening.
My love for gardening began back when we lived in Montana. My husband and I met while working in Yellowstone National Park, and our passion for the area kept us there as we started our family. As a young stay at home mother, I felt gardening was a way in which I could help provide for our family. We owned a small hobby ranch at the north entrance to the Park; the nearest grocery store was 52 miles away, and the nearest Walmart was over 80 miles away. A vegetable garden indeed was my own grocery store.
With the COVID-19 Pandemic and the food chain supply shortages that we have all experienced, I decided it was time to get back into gardening. However, to do so, we needed first to build a garden area. You see, three years ago, we left the farm life behind and moved to a quiet inland lake on a half-acre of land. Sunsets and boat rides replaced hay stacking and late-night birthing calls to the barn. Our "lake life" property was not set up for anything other than "lake life" activities. So this farm family got to work. Of course, one of the few benefits of COVID-19 is that our girls came home, which provided us with extra help. As the old saying goes, "many hands make light work." I am quite sure that they were not as thrilled about this as we were. ;)
Fortunately, we had planned to put in a retaining wall for a flower bed area, so it was easy to convert that plan to a vegetable garden. Instead of flowers, I have a garden full of onions, tomatoes, peppers, green beans, snap peas, and zucchini.
In addition to this vegetable garden, we decided to look for other areas that could be converted into sustainable food gardens. One of my other passions is food preservation, so there really can't be too many vegetable gardens.
A neighbor of ours gave us four different kinds of seed potatoes, so we added two potato gardens. I will be able to use them use in homemade soups for the long cold winter months that lay ahead. Let's not think about that right now.
I removed Day Lillys from these locations and transplanted them in front of the new retaining wall. Potatoes grow good in sun and shade, so these were the perfect spots for them.
While our focus has been to make our property more sustainable, I did have to keep a flower garden or two. I am happy to say that this year I truly do have my very own grocery store - flowers and all!
Be watching for upcoming food preservation posts!
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