Hello, friends! I wanted to give a summary of the birth of our garden this spring. I am new to blogging, but was encouraged to write by my Instagram followers…so here goes…! I figured I would begin with what has captivated my attention lately- our garden!

To set the stage, my family runs a small environmental company, so as an extension of our core values as an organization, we decided to build a garden! Behind our property, we have a nice sunny patch of land and agreed that this was the perfect spot. After plenty of pinteresting, we realized that raised beds would be our best bet. The land that we would be planting on was not suitable at all for growing anything. Lots of gravely hard soil sat right below the surface of the ground- plant babies would not flourish in this environment.

 

We started off by taking cedar planks and simply making rectangle shaped boxes. Driving stakes down the sides as additional support assured us that they would stay put. We originally wanted ONE bed…as you can see, we got a bit carried away!

 

After building the structure, we had a huge pile of soil delivered. It took us hours in 90 degree weather, but we managed to shovel it all in! This was definitely the toughest part of the process.

 

Since the construction of our garden took a bit longer than expected, we ended up buying plants that were potted and about 3-4 inches tall. We were worried if we planted seeds they would be behind in the growing season, and wouldn’t fruit. Next year we plan on using all seeds to plant. Also, is this baby bok choy the cutest or what? It was SO fun to plant these babies!

 

For our final step, we added an ‘irrigation system’…aka…a hose with holes drilled into it, connected to posts using zip ties. I probably should have left it at, ‘irrigation system’…but hey, I’m alllllll about honesty here. It isn’t too hard to water a garden, but how much more fun is it to have a funky sprinkler system to water your plants? SO. MUCH. MORE. FUN. This was super easy to do. Also, I’m not sure if the plants or I enjoy it more on a hot Wisconsin day. #winwin.