Much to my relief, this year’s garden is planted. I mentioned in my post about gardening last year that keeping up on the garden isn’t my favorite activity. However, I do love growing and consuming our own food.
We’ve planted in raised beds for the second year, and my favorite part of the raised beds is that they cut back greatly on the weeding. They also mostly eliminate the need to till. One other benefit, in my opinion, is that the beds are more attractive than traditional gardens with plants in the ground.
Our plants this year are mostly the same as last year. We’ll be looking forward to green beans, strawberries, broccoli, carrots, romaine lettuce, cucumbers, zucchini, watermelon, peas, tomatoes and peppers.
My personal favorites are broccoli and zucchini. Last year, most of our broccoli was eaten up by rabbits or groundhogs. We solved that problem by adding fencing around the beds most likely to be appealing to the current residents of our yard.
Hopefully we’ll have better luck this year, because I’ve found broccoli to be my favorite fresh vegetable. We also haven’t had much luck with zucchini, a plant that other people seem to have no problem growing. I’m hoping this is the year we get a good crop.
Have you tried raised bed gardening? How does it compare to traditional in the ground gardens? What fresh fruits and vegetables are you looking forward to eating this year?
