The Joy of Gardening

In the past our gardening endeavours each summer have been fairly successful but not so enjoyable. I hated walking in the dirt and mud to pick the vegetables, and disliked my children walking through it even more. By the end of summer we were tired of dealing with it all, so we let the bugs and weeds take over.

I convinced Paul to try something different this year. And being the wonderful husband he is, he went along with my crazy plan to do a Square Foot Garden. (I think he just wanted a project so he could use his dusty power tools). He built 6 beautiful 4'x4' boxes, drove with me all over town and into the next state to get the ingredients for "Mel's Mix", and he and John did a great job of planting grass. I even convinced him to help out a friend of mine who was doing the same type of garden, whose husband is "project" challenged (he's not so good with the tools and putting things together).

We planted strawberries, peas, spinach, lettuce, onions, tomatoes, cumbers, green beans, green peppers, yellow peppers, jalapeno peppers, cilantro, chives, squash, zucchini, miscellaneous flowers and lots of corn.


All of our country bumpkin neighbors were very intrigued by our little squares. We had an usually cool and wet summer so I didn't have to worry about watering all to much, in fact for a while we were growing mushrooms too. Some things grew better than others. Paul has completed a "project evaluation" and we are already making plans for next year. I won't bore you with next years plans or all of the things we need to do different.

We all had a lot of fun with the garden this year. Elizabeth enjoyed planting the seeds, John loved helping me water the plants and Sarah enjoyed picking and eating.

Walking in the dirt was no longer a challenge, weeds were no longer a challenge, we didn't need to worry about fertilizer (thanks to the compost), and we really didn't have too much trouble with bugs. After our garden this year we understand why people enjoy gardening.

We did have a rabbit come and eat the top off of the squash when it first sprouted, so we had to replant. And I learned a little lesson as I replanted that the Holy Ghost will even prompt us to know what to plant in our gardens.

The biggest challenge to our garden was Sarah! She just didn't have enough self control to not pick.

As soon as we had cute little green tomatoes, she would pick them. All of our pepper plants were very slow to grow anything, and sure enough as soon as they did Sarah picked those too. She was always searching through the strawberry patch for "bawwies". If I didn't catch her she would stick the whole strawberry in her mouth; stem, leaves and all. I don't think we ever had a strawberry make it to the house. She pulled the tops off the onions and ate those too. And she even liked the cilantro. I suppose I should be thankful, at least she was eating vegetables, because she won't touch them when we sit down to eat.


The kids' favorite thing from the garden was peas. I would pick them while the kids were outside playing and they would run over to get some to eat. I'd snap off the end, break it open and the kids had a good time picking the little peas out. They liked them so much we planted a second round of them. It was a good feeling to watch John run from the swing set to the garden yelling, "Mo peas, Mo peas."

I think there is a reason why later-day prophets have counseled us to "plant a garden", and it goes far beyond having food to eat!