And so it begins...the four W's.

Watering, weeding, watching and waiting. I'll take you on a little tour of the food growing on our property from east to west. Our house faces the south. The back of the house faces north.

That's the salad raised bed above on the north/eastern side behind the house. It has radishes, spinach, lettuce greens, cilantro and green onions in it.

Moving west along the northern fence we have the strawberry bed that is looking very good this year. It is starting to fill in and each plant is loaded with blooms and berries. I can almost smell the jam.

Here on the western side of the property lies the main family garden. It is about 20' X 25'. Each of the kids have their own small plot. These three squares above are the plots for the youngest three in our family.

There are the tomatoes under their green house tent. First we lay down black plastic, then cut holes and plant the tomatoes. Next we place tomato cages over each plant and lay down a long soaker hose. We then cover it with a semi-transparent plastic and clothes pin it at the tops and bottoms of the cages. Our tomatoes will get a fantastic head start this way. You can see pictures step by step from a previous year here.

I took the picture above from the garden bench Steve built me last year on the side of the garden shed. It's a great vantage point to sit in the shade and watch my garden grow. Behind the tomato tent lies the two older kids' garden areas. They are older and have a little bigger area to work with than the younger ones. On the right side behind the tent is a small area for dill, rasberries and broccoli plants. The potato bed is on the western side of the garden running north to south. In front of the tomatoes you can see the two double rows of green beans. (Well you really can't see the beans yet but you can see the area.) Just south of the green beans are the two beds of carrots and to the right of that is the pepper bed. We have 18 pepper plants this year. Last year we had 8 and we had just enough for salsa and a little eating. We also love to make shish-ka-bobs and stir fry so decided to increase how many plants we have. Finally we have the cucumber mounds in the south end of the garden that run west to east. We hope to have 16 plants again this year to make all of the pickles from. You may notice the walk-ways between the veggies areas. They are just the right size for a small narrow tiller we have access to. We will use it every few weeks to till between the rows keeping the garden looking neat. There is something so nice about an attractive garden free of weeds. I am quite happy to have all of our plants in this early. Now on to the watering, weeding, watching and waiting. I love it!