How the heck does she feed all those kids? Veggie Garden!

Hi Guys,

This post orginally appeared over at the Inspiration Cafe

Mel from Mellywood's Mansion and I'm really excited to share with you how we turned our pretty ordinary yard into our own little food bowl.

When kid 4 out of five came it was a big shock to us financially, we'd literally lost half our income and had an extra mouth to feed. So we really started researching all the best ways to save a few $$ and veggies gardening was one of those things that kept coming up. Living in a warmer climate means we can grow veggies year round, although winter is limited to beans, lettuces and Asian greens

We had no idea what we were doing, so basically this is a pictorial of how we started as newbies and transformed the yard into a productive garden.

We started small with a few pots and bought ready made seedlings, once we were a little confidence we started planting our own seeds.

Those little pots gave us so much joy that we decided to expand to the front of the block and bought a few raised garden beds. Planted and watched our garden grow. (It was around Christmas hence the candy canes)

When we moved into the "Mansion" there was already a huge, well established lemon tree, this tree fruits for around 10 months of the year. We supply everyone and anyone who asks...not to mention the thieves that climb the outside of the fence). Then we planted bare rooted apple trees and a tiny dwarf tree, which we finally got fruit from this year after 3 years.

The apples grew and we expanded our fruit trees to include peaches, nectarines, almonds and pears.

Then we made the decision to add even more beds and dug up the back with a little (actually a lot) of help from the boys.

Then we awaited the "fruits" of our labor. Julian named the back garden Pete's Garden for his father who passed away.

Unfortunately I don't have a lot of pictures of produce but here is a small sample.

All in all this is three years of work. We've read everything we could get our hands on, asked lots of questions and made a few mistakes but all in all I highly recommend trying it. By starting small and increasing as we went it wasn't as overwhelming as we thought it would be and we now save $100's a year by eating from our own garden.

So Melly, Melly, how does your garden grow? With hard work, patience and a lot of fun. Also I've said "we" a lot, I started with the small area in the beginning but Jule's and the boys are really the brains and labor behind most of what you've seen, including the cooking!

Right at present our peach and almond tree is beginning to flower which means Spring is right around the corner....Thank goodness for that!

Thanks for reading,

Mel xo

Be Delighted Every Day, Follow Mellywood's Mansion!