World of the Wilsons: Project Backyard and Garden

Ever since we moved into our house I've wanted to have a vegetable garden. I'm beginning to realize that you can't do everything at once and we're having to do things in phases. Last year, our spring/summer project was landscaping the front yard. That was a huge undertaking, but now it's complete and all I have to do every season is change out the beds with annuals. We also threw building a swimming pool into the mix. We were pretty busy between those two projects!

The plan this spring/summer was to focus on landscaping the backyard around the pool and near the patio and to plant a vegetable garden. We're not finished with the area near the patio, but I did buy some pots and planted some container arrangements around the pool. It's nothing fancy, but it makes the pool area look a lot nicer.

This was how it looked when I first planted it.

Four weeks later this is how much they've grown!

Our next project was the garden. We marked off the area and killed all the grass. Then Josh and Eli tilled the area up. The worst part of all this was getting all the dead grass and roots out of the dirt. It wasn't fun, but we finally finished!

Don't ask me why my child is wearing a helmet...I have no idea.

I wanted Eli to be involved in this project from start to finish. I think it's going to be fun for him to see how those tiny seeds grow into plants that make food for us. I'm hoping it will also encourage him to try new vegetables...fingers crossed!

We couldn't decide if we wanted to make rows or just plant the seeds in the ground, but we ended up going with the rows. It's what we did when we planted a garden 10 years ago and it seemed to work great. We planted purple hull peas, lima beans, snap beans, squash, zucchini, watermelon and cantaloupe. Yummy! I can't wait to cook some fresh veggies!