Gardening: Not Just a Mega Money-Saver

Gardening: Not Just a Mega Money-Saver

Gardening is a great way for our family to save a fair amount of money each year on our grocery bill. But gardening is hard work, and it requires dedication, consistency, and problem solving (all qualities that we are trying to teach our kids)! What could be better than providing our family with fresh foods that we know exactly how and where they were grown? The fruits of our labor are worth all of the difficulties!

Last year's purple beans and wax beans get a nice shower before going into the freezer.

Since we live in town, we do not have a good space for a garden, but our family has annually offered us a large garden space on their property a few miles away, and I am quite grateful! Though the spring and summer months, we visit our garden probably five days a week to manage all of the issues there. I like to talk about a few major topics surrounding gardens, like start up, plant choices, and our potato towers.

My awesome husband is keeping our soil
nice and powdery and free of weeds.

How do we get started?

Choosing our garden location is important. We need an area that gets a lot of sun. We want a spot that's pretty flat. We have to have good soil. The soil where we plant needed quite a bit of help our first few years. We cleared off the sod and found that our soil was rich in clay, and that isn't perfect for all plants. We did some soil samples and took them to our local experts where they gave us some suggestions to help our soil. Listen to experts. Everyone faces different issues, and experts help amateurs like me figure out a solution! Getting the soil nice and powdery is of utmost importance for a lot of technical reasons. We use a couple of techniques to get the concrete-like clay soil to soften up. We roto-till it first, and then I double dig the areas where our seeds and plants get placed in the garden. Double digging means that you dig a deeper hole than you actually need for your plants and seeds and place about 6" of loose soil under your plants and seeds to allow their roots to really go deep. Deep roots = healthy plants.

What do we plant?

Because I intend to store a lot of our produce, I only choose items that meet several requirements. First, our family must actually like to eat the food. I will not plant turnips, because we won't eat turnips. Second, the items we plant must work well in a canning, freezing or dry goods application unless we just plan to eat the fresh items as they become available. For instance, most lettuces don't can or freeze well, so I only plant as much as our family can eat fresh. Third, I try to plant foods that are easy to care for. Since my garden isn't out the back door, it requires our family to drop everything each time we need to work there, and since summertime is busy, I have learned to only tend to plants that aren't tricky or cantankerous.

Pepper plants and tomato plants are
 getting a good start!

Some of my personal favorites include:

-bush beans

-bi-color corn

-cucumbers for pickling

-bell peppers

-jalapenos

-potatoes

-several varieties of tomatoes

-herbs

-beets

What is a potato tower?

This potato tower holds our Pontiac potatoes. We planted celery in the top
 of the tower as an experiment. See how the tower is nestled in the edge of the garden?

Several years ago, we had some issues with our potatoes. I planted about ten pounds of seed potatoes and got very little yield. I was very disappointed, and scoured the internet for reasons why this could have happened. I know deep down that it was a combination of poor soil quality, poor upkeep with weeds and lack of space for root development. As a result, my husband and I decided to experiment with a potato tower that I saw online.

Basically, a potato tower consists of some kind of structure, (we used a piece of metal fence that we fastened into a cylindrical shape) that is layered with seed potatoes, straw, and soil. Our towers measure about 2 1/2 feet in diameter. We lay the straw on the outside and layer potatoes and soil. Eventually, the potato plants push their way through the straw and the leaves and flowers are all around the entire tower. When harvest time arrives, we unfasten the piece of fence, and potatoes are everywhere! We liked them so well that we decided to make two of them this year: one for Russet and one for Pontiac!

Glad About Gardening

Our kids love gardening! You can see
our daughter playing in the dirt
 near one of the potato towers.

There are lots of times when I could complain about our garden. Yes my back hurts from working in it. Yes, I sometimes get too much sun. We have had blights effect an entire crop. But even so, the frustration is all worthwhile once the harvest comes! The garden does save us money, but the other advantages are immeasurable! Our kids are growing up watching their food grow. They are watching their parents work together to make something work. They are learning how to problem solve, and consistently care for something. They are watching a process and learning to be helpful. They are harvesting healthy foods and watching the process of storing foods. And sometimes we let them take charge of the hose to water the plants; what could be better fun? Plus, gardening is worthwhile exercise!

Our corn has popped up in nice little
rows. Some of it has been hoed, and
some still needs work.

A different angle of  the corn. We have
our pie tins tied out to keep the birds from
stealing our seeds!

Then God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you

Genesis 1 :29