Mama Gone Green is a blog dedicated to raising happy children and reducing our impact on the Earth. My name is Taryn and I am the mother of 2 young kids and an environmental studies instructor at a community college in Portland, Oregon. Please join me as I journey through life as a mama, teacher, knitter, photographer, gardener, and environmentalist!

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Our June Garden

The first snap pea of the season!
The past month or so I have spent a lot of time in our garden. Our garden, which is really our entire front yard, had been completely overrun by grass. And we had had enough. So, I spent several weekends pulling out all of the grass and then another weekend putting a thick layer of mulch on top of the yard. Between the pulling, the shoveling and the wheelbarrow-ing, my hands were covered in blisters and I had a better workout than I could ever get by going to the gym.
We also built some new garden beds in our parking strip and added a new plating area in our backyard.
This year we decided to only do a few things from seed (lettuce, carrots, beets, beans, snap peas) and to buy starts for everything else. And I think we made a good decision. Although May had several sunny days, our June has been cool, rainy, and full of slugs. I know that any sprouting seedling would have been decimated. Plus, checking on seedlings every day has been one less thing to worry about!
We planted tomatillos, tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, butternut squash, spaghetti squash, bush beans, pole beans,  cilantro, dill, and some Italian herbs. I wanted to choose about a million more plants, but we just don't have the space.
But, we do have our fingers crossed for a good gardening year with plenty of food to share with neighbors and friends. Really, is there anything better?

Our new garden boxes

The mulched yard.

Street view

The piles of mulch and dirt that I had  to shovel!

Our favorite pesticide- spiders!!

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6 comments:

  1. Your garden looks great. We have good growth, but little actual fruit...a few squash, some peas. I am hoping for cantelope and beans as the summer progresses. I still haven't quite got the hang of gardening in Arizona and haven't been able to do a lot out in our garden since my surgery. I would like to build some raised gardens for next years...we shall see. Thanks for the motivation to get out there and get my garden into shape!

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  2. Wow! so inspiring! As renters, we haven't invested any time or energy in a garden. :( Hoping when we get back "home" to our real house, we will!

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  3. LOVE everything! I especially love how you're even using your street side strip! And I agree with the spiders. Though I'm not a fan at looking at them, I do appreciate them. When we were only living in our house on the weekends, we had a spider in one window that was doing such a great job, I just left her there to do her work all week. But when we moved back in full time, I had to take down her web. Its not too inviting in the house for company. ;)

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  4. Wow, it looks beautiful!

    Our garden is also in our front yard. Yours is so inspiring...I need to go to work!

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  5. Your garden is so beautiful! We just had three yards of dirt dropped onto our driveway - hoping our rain lets up so we can get some short sessions veggies planted!
    I love the shot of your new planters!

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  6. It's so pretty! I love the yellow flowers. I've always wanted raised beds - they are so neat looking. You've got so much planted - wow!

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