Well, this has been a long time coming.  My husband and I have always lived in apartments or condominiums, both before we met and since we got married.  We have never had room for a vegetable garden, but to be honest, we never really wanted one.

But as we embarked on building our home for the future, it was something I really wanted to do — to have the freshest produce available all summer from our backyard, and to have an appreciation for, and connection to, where our food comes from.  Our kids love it, too.  And after reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.), it became, as my 5 year old daughter learned about in pre-k, a “have to”.

Last fall, we had extra wood siding from our home.  The siding was reclaimed cypress from old pickle vats.  It is beautiful, and not something that should go to a landfill or be burned if you have any extra.  So we decided we would use it to build raised bed planters in our backyard.  We have tons of bunnies, and they would definitely feast on a short vegetable garden.  And as we learned today, it is really nice on the back planting above knee-high!

I had on my to-do list all winter and spring “plan vegetable garden”.  I bought a book, the The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible (10th Anniversary Edition), and read the first ten pages.  It seemed an overwhelming task.  Beth Anne, the woman who cuts my hair, gave me a short sigh of relief when she told me in early April not to plant seeds indoors and then transplant them outside.  That would have required a lot more work, a lot more planning, and possibly a lame vegetable garden.

So this weekend, we packed the kids in the car and set off for Shady Acres in Farm on the southwest outskirts of Minneapolis.  It is not a certified organic farm, but it is a local family farm, and they assured me they do not use pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides.  They do use fertilizers, but “all natural” fertilizers.  We bought herbs: basil, dill, oregano, thyme, parsley, and rosemary.  (We also bought mint, but will plant that somewhere else since it is so invasive.)  We bought little vegetable plants: tomatoes, cucumbers, a few varieties of lettuce and kale, swiss chard, spinach, cabbage, and brussel sprouts.  We also bought some marigolds for the corners to help ward off unwanted predators of the garden.

Today, we planted everything but the tomatoes, cucumbers, and basil, as those plants are a little more sensitive to the cold, and Minneapolis is not out of the woods yet with respect to freezing weather.  We also are going to seed bush beans (they do not need a trellis) and peas, directly into the soil, next week.

One of the best things about accomplishing the plantings this weekend is that (a) I got to cross it off my to-do list, and (b) it no longer looks like we have two caskets waiting for our departure in our backyard.