There are many American children who believe that vegetables come from the grocery store. In our family, we know that this is not the case. We grow our own garden in our backyard every year, even though this year it wasn't exactly a stellar one. For me, I see roughly three main parts to growing our garden: the work at the beginning, the produce at the end of the year, and the experience and knowledge to do better next year. Then it repeats. All of these steps are important to having a healthy and fresh garden.
The work is the hard(obviously), part, but also the most satisfactory. For our family, it is buying seeds, roto-tilling the garden, digging and planting, and then the weeding. The weeding is the hardest part because, even with Preen, it just keeps coming back. With all of the other things, they are hard, but are more money/time consuming. This is the part that, for me anyways, seems to fly by.
The produce is fun because it keeps giving from the middle to the end of the season. You have fresh food that is far better than from stores, and is even better than that because your hard work and preparation went into it. Plus, you now have plenty of veggies to eat in your own back yard. And for us, well, we always have too much left over, and then it's good to give away that fresh taste to other people.
The experience and knowledge piece helped us a lot on our first year. An example is: don't plant the watermelon so late! If something goes wrong in your garden, sorry, but good for you. That will let you learn for next year. And many times, it would result in much less work, and much more produce. We have learned a lot through trial and error.
Our family has learned that worked-for produce tastes much better than what we buy at the store. Even though you have to use three main hard steps, instead of one quick and easy step. While the work is hard the produce, knowledge, and experience are so worth it.
-Written by N
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