Our First Garden.

You have got to start somewhere. When we decided to start our first garden we picked a tiny plot that recieved the most sun behind our house. We did not know what our needs would be so we started small. We had started out thinking we would plant permanent beds and mulch in between them with wood chips to keep grass and weeds down. I think we planted broccoli, peppers, sunflowers, corn, tomatoes and herbs. I wish I was as obsessive then as I am now with taking pictures of the growing process. I still have some great shots of the process. We quickly realized how much more we would like to grow for ourselves and almost doubled our garden space the second year.  

My boyfriend shovelling compost. 

The beds we made. 

We had rented a tiller too and tilled all these spots after covering them for several days with the compost. 

We made them different sizes to accommodate different crops. 

The cedar mulch and a beer break. 

Mulch in place. 

Terrible stuff. Little did I know it would hinder the growth of the garden and not help it. 

Fence in place to keep kitties out. 

Tilling the beds and head scratching. 

Some help from the neighbours dog. 

She's so pretty!

We grew our peppers and tomatoes through black plastic that year. I think I started them both terribly late and I doubt they amounted to anything worth remembering, since I can't recall how the harvest was. Trial and error is sometimes the best way to learn. 

Broccoli seedlings, I think. 

Not too shabby. Looks like corn, sunflowers and something else. If I remember correctly we did have an ear of corn. 

Tomatoes through plastic. 

I guess we did gets lots of tomatoes that year. Not sure why I picked them all while they were green, frost maybe? I do remember wrapping them in paper one year, this must have been it. 

We grew a 12 ft tall sunflower that year. Right in the middle of our lawn. I've since moved the bed it had grown from. 

The stalk from the sunflower. 

Looks like we got at least one pumpkin that year too. This is exactly why I take so many gardening pictures, I never trust my memory. 

Stay tuned to see the difference with our second and third gardens! This gardening season will mark our fourth gardening anniversary, with many, many more to come.