But getting on with today,
If you'd like to try your hand at growing some of your own food or flowers this coming spring/summer/fall, but haven't given it much thought yet, there's never a better time to start than now.
Having a family garden can offer a lot of different benefits to your family.
1. It allows you to save some $$$ when it comes time to shop because fresh fruits and vegetables can be among the most expensive things on the menu.
2. It fosters a feeling of self-reliance because you've learned to do something that 50% of the world probably can't do. In the case of emergency, you know what to do (at least in part).
3. It offers you the chance to work together on something as a family (unfortunately quite a foreign concept in much of the world today) and is a perfect vehicle for teaching all members the value of hard work and reaping what you've sown--now this is much easier in word than practice. Everyone involved has to feel like it's their garden too. Not just that it's mom's or dad's and the rest are being forced to work in it. It needs to be everyone's garden.
But anyways, this post is about preparation rather than practice.
The first thing to do is determine where you would like to place your garden. How much room do you have there? How much sunlight does it get? If it's inside in buckets/pots (or even outside in them) how deep are your pots? All these things will help you determine both the quantity you can plant and exactly what you'll be able to plant given the conditions you can offer the plant. Just like a pet dog wouldn't be much of a pet if kept in a shoebox all day, you need to offer your plants just what they need if you want them to offer back the best they have.
Second decide what it is that you use the most because that is what will be the most beneficial for you to plant. If you don't eat carrots don't plant them. Don't even plant them in the hope that you'll eat them (unless you have a large space for gardening -- enough to waste some) because you don't want to take up room that you could be using to grow things you'd typically eat.
Third, draw out a plan of where you'll plant everything. You're gonna need to know come gardening time.
Fourth, find out about each plant. You don't need to know everything, but a quick google search will tell you how deep the ground needs to be, what kind of sun/water they'll need, and how to best grow them. Be sure to pay attention to the height of the plants. Don't plant something that needs lots of sun next to a plant that is growing to shoot up and drop the sun lover into the shade.
Five, if you've given yourself enough time you can get the cheapest seeds by ordering them online, so start looking now.
Sixth and final, begin saving food scraps and building up a compost. This will provide you some free fertilizer (friends who own horses could probably provide you with some good fertilizer too).
A family garden, regardless the size, can include a lot more preparation, but this is a good start (especially if you've never gardened before).
If you're skeptical, we really encourage you to try planting just one thing in either a pot or the ground. Try carrots, or strawberries, or onions, or something. It will only take a little work from you and then see how you feel about it when you know that the food you're eating was homegrown and picked yourself rather than foreign grown and picked by Enrique in some factory out in the jungle. There's so much that's good about a family garden, but my wife tells me I'm long winded so we'll end it here for today. Take care all.
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