For a long time now I have dreamed of having our own backyard equipped with a garden, so when we were shown our home, I was almost as excited to see the raised bed already installed as I was about the two bathrooms. With the help of this book and this stuff and of course helpful tips from experienced friends we were able to have a pretty successful garden our first time around.

This is phase two of the garden. I meant to post pictures earlier, but didn't. We started out with lettuce, spinach, snap peas and carrots. All of it came out great accept for the lettuce. I'll have to try something a little different next year. Phase two has cherry tomatoes, squash, peppers, beans and cucumbers. I'll for sure have to rearrange things differently next year and do some pruning, because the tomatoes grew out of control and completely shaded my peppers and cucumbers and just kind of took everything over. One of the nice things has been that my kids are loving eating the fresh vegetables. Before when I put it on a plate for them they didn't want anything to do with it, but picking it fresh off the vine has made all the difference.
The zucchini has been a treat to have. It's been fun trying to think of what else I can possibly make with it. Any ideas please send them my way. My kids are getting plenty of it in their diet and they don't even realize it.

My friend Ellen brought over and helped me transplant some raspberry plants and they have thrived much more than I thought for their first year.
We even had a few blackberry vines sneak into our yard from the neighbors. It has been so fun and I'll be sad when the harvest is over and will be making trips to the store for fresh produce again, but I'm already anticipating next year's garden.