Spring has sprung, so on Sunday, I prepped my flower and vegetable garden beds. With the weather so nice, my kids wanted to play outside, so I decided to hit the garden store in the morning, so I could work on the gardens while they played. The first thing I did was add mulch to our front flower bed. We already have a few blooms coming up for spring – in that garden bed we have tulips, daffodils and hyacinths – and I want to keep the weeds down once the flowers start flowering. I bought two bags of mulch, but it wasn’t enough to cover the garden bed, so I’ll be back to the garden store Continue reading...

A sunflower that I grew in my family's raised garden bed last summer.Last spring, one of the best things my daughters and I did together was designate an area of our yard for a raised garden bed, and started a flower and vegetable garden. We started small and planted sunflowers, peas, tomatoes and sunflowers. My daughters loved watching the sunflowers grow, and especially liked eating the peas straight out of the garden. This year, we decided to expand our garden, and bought the same raised garden kit that we purchased last spring from Eartheasy.com, the Farmstead Raised Garden Continue reading...

Now that my family’s vegetable garden is nearly on its way (I still have to add more soil), I’ve been thinking about what we want to plant this spring. My daughters and I definitely would like to plant some peas. We got a bit of a late start last year (and didn’t plant until about May), so this year we will do it right and plant our peas around St. Patrick’s Day, the traditional pea planting time for much of the Mid-Atlantic states. We had some success with sunflowers in our garden last year, so this year we hope to plant sunflowers again, but BIGGER ones. So, I purchased a few Continue reading...