The Farmer in the 'Hood...

For the past two weeks, I've been ogling the gardens of others. Like this one. Oh...and this one. I am trying hard not to be jealous of these beautiful and sprawling gardens (because bigger gardens = more weeds, right???). At least that's what I tell myself as I'm trying to slay the "green-eyed monster."

I have been hesistant to show you my whole garden, because I've wondered: Does a really, tiny plot of raised beds count as a garden?

The answer, of course, is YES! To us, spending time in our teenie, tiny garden has felt heavenly. I love to see what's growing, what has flowers on it, what will someday (hopefully) become a delicious part of some salsa or spaghetti sauce or zucchini bread or salad or strawberry pie. You see where my heart is people? It's all about the food!

I suspect that a lot of familes don't garden because they think that they don't have enough space. That's where I come in...the "Farmer in the 'Hood," here to prove that yes, you can have a garden smack dab in the middle of suburbia. As evidence, I present to you Exhibit A: The Farmstead, An Aerial View

Kind of smallish, right? But guess what? We stuffed it with nine tomato plants, seven pepper plants, three strawberry plants, three sweet potato plants, two zuchinni plants, a honeydew plant, a cantalope plant (my husband's idea...they're already getting so big that they'll be flowing out of the bed and into the middle of the yard by next week), beans (we planted 50 bean seeds. Fifty! And they all came up. I had to wipe away a tear as we said farewell and tore out more than half of them this week), carrots, onions, parsely, oregano, basil, and broccoli. All of that, stuffed into that teenie, tiny garden.

We live on a 1/3 acre lot. We have a homeowners association. We have neighbors who probably shake their heads and laugh at the crazy family that measures their tomato plants every night. That's okay, though. Because we're "Farmers in the 'Hood" (stay tuned for a facebook fan page, coming soon). Ha!

In real gardening news, we had to stake up the tomatos again. You all were laughing at me last week, weren't you? We seriously thought those 18" stakes would last all summer, but one week later, we have moved on to the big green monster stakes. Tell me that my tomato plants will not get any bigger than these stakes? If they do, I may not be able to see out my window in a few weeks!

Mostly, I am having a hard time keeping my girls involved in the garden. We watered, and we measured things, and we picked a few strawberries, and we thinned the beans. I think that the excitement of creating the garden and watching the seeds pop up is over and the excitement of picking the veggies hasn't arrived. We're kind of stuck in-between, and I could use some suggestions on how to keep my girls interested (books? craft projects? science experiments?). All ideas are welcome!

But we did have a few garden fairies visit this week, and that was fun. You just never know what will happen when you're farmin' in the 'hood!

Hop on over to The Inadvertent Farmer's KinderGarden post this week (and feel free to ogle the amazing gardens)!