Starting the Garden

It's just about time to start the garden again and I'm soooo excited!

Experts usually say not to start until after Mother's Day (because it has to be after the last frost).  We usually wait until Memorial Day because weather in Utah can be tricky.  One year, it snowed on Memorial Day and froze our whole garden.  A lot of our neighbors have planted their gardens already because we've had such mild weather.  I haven't been able to decide what to do.  If the weather stays nice, we will have missed out on a whole extra month of gardening.  But if it freezes, it would ruin a whole month worth of work!

So, I finally decided to start this weekend.  We spent all day on Friday driving from greenhouse to greenhouse and then to Wal-mart and Home Depot trying to find the best deals.  It turns out that the best deals were the first place we went, so after all of that, we had to go back to the first greenhouse.  When we finally got home, I checked the forecast.  Saturday night was supposed to get down to 36!  Great.  Right when I bought everything to start.  We decided to plant our herbs in the balcony pots and plant the rest of the garden next week.

The kids were good helpers mixing up the dirt and stirring in the bunny poop.

(Jeff gave us a bunch of bunny poop).

Saxon was the most interested in helping.

He dug a little hole, then scooped up some bunny poop and dumped it in.

Then he added a little water...

Then he planted the rosemary.

This is our first year with rosemary.

I want to try the pinterest recipe where you boil rosemary with vanilla to get your house to smell like Williams-Sonoma.

Then he planted the cilantro.

I fail at cilantro every. single. year.

I almost gave up on it, but I decided to read about it and try it once more.

It turns out, there's nothing I can do to keep my cilantro from turning to coriander.

It just has a short life.

Apparently I should re-plant every week or so so I can always have a fresh plant to replace the original once once it bolts.  It sounds like a ton of work.  It really might be more worth it to buy the 50 cent bunch of cilantro at the grocery store...

but I am determined to make it work at least once!

 We also planted some parsley and sweet basil.
 
While we were busy planting our herb garden...Dalton decided to help himself to a box of cereal.  Special K was on sale at Macey's and I had a coupon so I bought 8 boxes.  My kids love it so I knew we would go through it.  I set the boxes at the top of the stairs for Nate to take down and put in our food storage until we were ready to use them.  I opened one box and put it in the pantry.  Dalton decided that he wanted some, but instead of getting into the pantry, he got into the food storage.  He ripped open the entire box and then pulled out the bag of cereal and handed it to me.  I had to take it from him before he got the bag open.  This kid is like a baby mouse.  He can use his little teeth to get into anything!

The clean balcony and my 5 flower pots :)

I LOVE our garden.

I can't wait to plant the rest of it!

In my dream-life (also my pinterest life) I am going to have a house with a big backyard and a huge garden.  Also chickens.  I've heard some debate whether chicken poop is better for gardens or bunny poop.  We're going to try both...one day...