Let's Get Growing!

For years I've been wanting to try my hand at gardening. I never yet have since I seem to kill most of the plants I try to take care of. With the exception of some potted annuals on the porch, I've never had luck with green things.

A friend of mine gave me a window plant set for a hostess gift a couple of months ago and the boys and I planted them one day. I've managed to keep them alive and growing and that's given me the confidence to take on bigger things. In talking with my fellow homeschooling Mommy friends at our weekly park date, I picked up a bunch of tips and pointers and was ready to give this gardening thing a try.

One of them does lasagna gardening, which is basically laying down some cardboard or layers of newspaper and then layering compost materials and soil. I was going to give that a try but then found that I'd need a truck or trailer to haul the topsoil I'd need, neither of which we have. So on Friday, Rick came out with his tools and buckets of compost for me and we worked all morning on tilling our pure clay with compost, peat moss, sand, more compost, and more peat moss until we had a fairly decent soil mix.
Drama King enjoyed helping with each task for about 30 seconds, then would declare himself in charge of a new, more fun looking task. He posed well for pictures though so it appears that he was hard at work. ; )Goober wasn't interested in helping much at all. In fact, I had to force him to be outside with us. In a rare event, Drama King was willing to share his DS with him so that's ALL he wanted to do. Mean mom that I am, I made him join us outside in the beautiful weather.
And BabyCakes helped in his usual BabyCakes way. He sampled a handful of soil, played some lovely music for us with a plastic shovel and bucket lid, and just looked cute. I did discover that he loves dirt! He really enjoyed playing in both the dirt and sandbox. I think he just may be my boy with worms in his pockets.On Saturday the Teen and I planted our seeds; green beans, wax beans, peas and cantelope. This morning, the boys and I planted the starter plants I bought; watermelon, tomato, eggplant and zucchini. I'm thinking at least one of my zucchini plants won't make it as Goober, in his attempt to help, pulled out the seedling from it's root. I planted it anyway, hoping for a miraculous recovery but I'm not too hopeful. So if anyone has an extra zucchini plant, I'd be willing to take it off your hands.
I'm really hoping this is successful. I have vision of going out to the garden and grabbing some of our own, homegrown, fresh produce this summer. Yum!