Garden Update – Summer 2017

Remember when I used to write things about my garden?

In 2015, making a successful garden was one of my goals… I made plans… I shared a photo of my plants growing… And some of my harvests…

Last year, I didn’t make gardening one of my official goals, but I did a big (for me) DIY project… and I planted things… and then I talked about my harvests…

This year, I have done none of that… Okay, well I have done some of it, I just haven’t documented any of it…

I planted some stuff in little seedling pots to get things started…  But then didn’t plant it because I wanted to make dog/deer fence to keep my garden safe… and that took forever…  So, my seedlings stayed as seedlings for probably way too long…

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Garden Update – Strawberries & Radishes!

I think I am getting better at this gardening thing… finally!  You saw my strawberries in a post a couple weeks ago on my financial update.  (I have since replaced that photo with the proper graph, so I’ll show them to you again here.)  Those are still going strong.  I pick a bowl like this every couple days.

Then, a few days ago when I was trying to make my lunch before work with no food in the fridge, I decided to go check on my garden (yes, I finally planted things in my new raised bed) to see what was growing, and low and behold, vegetables!

Garden Renovations: New Raised Bed

Last year I had a goal of creating a garden in my backyard that would supply me with lots of fruit and veggies… But I didn’t really have any knowledge about any of it, and mother nature had other ideas for me…

My beans were destroyed by the deer… my strawberries and cherries were stolen by the raccoons, and some unseasonably warm temperatures in early spring made my radishes bolt (something I learned about last year), so I only got one or two of them before they turned all woody and weird…

But I also learned quite a bit.  I learned that it is really important to thin out both carrots and radishes if you want them to grow to full size…  And I learned that I need to get some sort of animal protection on my garden to keep the deer and raccoons out.

I had grand plans of planting more veggies in the fall and having winter crops, but my work schedule got in the way…  So that didn’t happen…

Anyway, this year I have new plans for the garden… I’ve made a list in my bullet journal of fruit and vegetables that I want to learn about, so hopefully I can grow them.  I want to learn to use the dehydrator that my grandmother gave me for Christmas.  And, while I haven’t made these official goals for 2016 like I did in 2015, I figure I’ll post about them and share my struggles and lessons…

Health & Fitness and Misc. Goals Update

Last week I did an update on both my financial goals and my professional goals.  I had planned to have this post written to publish on Monday this week, but then I got sick… and all I managed to do all weekend was sit on my couch and watch Netflix.  Not super productive, but that’s about all my brain and body could handle.  Now that I’m all back to normal (or mostly), I figured I should finish up my goals review and update with my health & fitness goals and my miscellaneous goals.

Health & Fitness Goals

I had 6 goals originally when I made them back in December.  The first was to lose 15lbs by my wedding.  Well, my wedding has come and gone… and I definitely wasn’t down 15lbs from my post-Christmas weight, so that was a FAIL!  However, I did manage to get almost 10lbs down before the summer festivities started up… I don’t really want to put emphasis on weight, as I am constantly reminded that it is about feeling good and being healthy, not about the numbers on the scale, but I want to make myself a new goal of being back down to that 10lbs below post-Christmas 2014 before the end of this year.  I realize that means that I am putting my deadline right after one of the worst times for weight gain… but so be it.

My Morning Harvest

It’s not as impressive as what Christine (at The Barefoot Budget) gets by any means, but I’m proud of my little haul this morning. I decided to thin out the carrots a bit, though I had kind of given up on them… And the ones I was pulling out actually had carrots attached!! Really really small carrots, but now that I’ve thinned them out, the others should grow. Yay!

my morning harvest 

Anyone else been gardening lately?

My Garden… so far…

One of my random goals for the year was to plan and execute an awesome veggie garden in our backyard.  The goal was to do a bunch of research, learn a bunch about different plants and figure out which ones go well together to get a really good plan in place to make the most out of my two raised beds in the backyard.  I’d plant as soon as the frost was done and get multiple plantings and have fresh produce all summer long…