Suburban Gardening, Metro DC style

A few weeks back, we got a freak snowstorm here, and now it is bright and sunny and about 47F, which to my husband means t-shirt weather. Welcome to springtime in DC.

We are suburban gardeners. (I use the royal We here, as it is mostly him.) Several years ago, he and a friend built a raised garden bed in the low point of the backyard, where it was spongy anyway, and he covered it with chicken wire above and below to keep out the deer and rabbits. That is where we contain most of our gardening. Leaving it open would just be a deer snack bar. The garden in back in mostly squash, tomatoes of all kinds, beans, lettuce and basil.

Last year, Husband dumped some of our compost into the front yard, in a sunny spot between the azaleas, where I hadn’t managed to keep a flower garden growing. Our 6 yr old is the co-gardener and on this day, she is supervising the building of  new beds in the front yard. Part of the prep has been to take old wood from a previous project, and make about a 5ft by 2ft box and a smaller 3ft x 16 in box for the plants. The boxes were filled with compost from our backyard tumbler and old leaves. He ran drip lines from the rain barrels. The rest will have to wait for a trip to a nursery for seeds, unless we get more volunteer plants. One of the benefits of composting is that you sometimes get more of what you already eat when seeds survive in the compost. We would love to have the room to do what Sara does but that will take more land and probably fewer deer.

Kiddo wants to be a farmer. She's gardened with her dad since she could toddle up to the side of the garden bed and eat the basil straight off the plant. I enjoy watching them do "their thing". It brings back memories of my own childhood when my mother had a garden behind our garage. I also think it is good for kids to see food, to watch it grow from seeds or sprouts, and care about the soil. My role is pretty much to eat All The Things. Tomato sandwiches, anyone? Hopefully in a few weeks I can update with how our garden grows.