{our little summer garden 2016}

hi there! i decided it was time for a little garden + growing update of sorts!

as you know there’s much going on around here… so my husband and i decided that one place we could slow things down (to make it more manageable) was the garden. i’m not standing the heat super well with being a human incubator and all, so a little lighter load outdoors has been pleasant for me this summer.

here’s what is going + growing these days…

+ we decided with the history of our mini farm (car maintenance as well as a dairy cow farm) that we would change our initial “in ground garden” plans to raised bed garden plans. this allows us to know that the dirt doesn’t have any harsh chemicals as one can never really be sure when you’re talking about farmed and well used land.

+ we have built three brand-new raised garden beds in a sunny place in our yard! one is filled with growing tomatoes, peppers and lettuce. a second is getting filled with quality dirt as we find it for cheap. and the third is our composting bed this year. 

+we have begun to use a compost tumbler to mostly compost veggie/produce/plant scraps so that we can add them to one open raised bed each year. this will allow us to compost and not attract various animals (with extremely fresh food scraps) so near to our growing produce and laying flock of chickens. we will be able to have one open raised bed each year to rotate our soil and keep things vibrant and replenished as needed.

we hope to add a bit more to the overall structure this summer and upcoming fall. but we are going to take it easy with just doing what we can. however, we figured if most of the structure is in place for next spring planting that will be much easier for us as we won’t be starting from scratch like we did this past spring. 

how about you? any good planting?

*i added this post to Our Simple Homestead Blog Hop #66 - go check out all the fun posts sharing about homesteading and simple living!