Spring is in the air…hopefully!

Well, according to the calendar, it’s spring! I’m cautious to agree. After all, it is Alberta. You never know from day to day what the weather is going to be. Mother Nature can sometimes be cruel. Just when we start getting excited that we can put away our winter gear, she throws another snowstorm our way!

What I am looking forward to this spring is the same as what I have been looking forward to the last 2 years…my garden. I am no gardener, by any means! But I try. And my (almost) seven year-old gets more excited about it than I do. That definitely makes all the work that goes into a garden worth it.

The reason I started our garden was for the simple satisfaction of being able to walk into my backyard and pick some produce for a meal or snack. Driving to the grocery store to buy my produce is definitely easier, but not as satisfying…and for most items we’ve grown, not as tasty.

For the last two years, the beginning of spring means deciding what we’re going to grow in our garden. I involve my daughter because I want to teach her about growing food and all the work that goes into it. She gets excited trying to think of different vegetables and fruit that she wants to try and grow.

We have two raised garden beds in our backyard. I would love to have more, but I struggle with also wanting lots of play space for my daughter. One of the garden beds is only for fruit and the other for vegetables.

Our first year, we grew strawberries in our fruit garden bed. We also planted 2 blueberry plants and 1 raspberry plant, but we weren’t able to get any fruit from them, unfortunately. In our vegetable garden bed, we grew cucumbers, carrots and yellow beans. We planted romaine lettuce as well, but nothing came up.

Our second year, strawberries and raspberries grew in our fruit garden bed. In the vegetable garden bed, we grew cucumbers, carrots and yellow beans again. We also tried sugar snap peas. We only got a few pea pods on each plant, but that was enough to make my daughter want to try them again this year.

The reason I wanted to write about this topic was to maybe spark some interest in some people who have never tried gardening before. It’s a lot of work. Some days when I’m weeding and I’d rather be doing anything else, I wonder why I put myself through this. But during, at the end of the summer and the beginning of the fall (depending on what item is sprouting), when we’re picking our produce out of the garden to cook or just eat at supper that night, I know that it’s all worth it.

I’m not sure what we’re growing this year yet. Sugar snap peas are still on the list, I believe. And of course, our strawberries that come back each year, currently occupy most of the space in the fruit garden bed. But with the snow disappearing more and more each day, I keep looking to my garden beds and am getting excited to see sprouts come up in a couple months.

Do you have a garden? Do you involve your children or grandchildren in gardening? What is your favorite or most successful item to grow? I’ll keep you posted on our 2017 gardening experience.
If you have any nutrition topics you would like me to write about or have a question you would like answered, email me at thedishonlcn@gmail.com. I would really like to hear from you!