The start of our 2022 garden (Low budget)

First, my boyfriend, Casey, gathered scrap wood from his place of work. If you see a group of contractors on a job site, chances are if you ask, they are usually willing to give you scrap wood for free! Most of the time the wood would have gone into the trash otherwise! Just make sure to ask first and if they decline just carry on with your day!

I'm so lucky to have such a handy man <3

Next we had a local business come and bring us 3 yards of loam (We split it with Casey's grandmother only costing us $50 each) We were able to fill multiple gardens with this!

Casey also built me a raised bed for my strawberries. We then used old chicken wire we found around our yard to keep the deer and other animals out. If you don't have any wire laying around you can find it very cheap at most local hardware stores, or, you could buy some online!

Strawberries

This is my first-time growing Strawberries, I bought them from an online company who sells them as Bare root plants! It's been such a cool process to see how these yummy berries grow. As Per the instructions we planted them in a soil/sand mixture and just about all of the plants survived! I was a little worried since some of the branches started dying off due to transplant shock but within a few weeks, new growth was clearly happening! I then took all but one plant and planted them in the raised garden bed as seen below.

Zucchini & Summer Squash

This is also our first-time growing Zucchini and Summer Squash. Growing up I was very picky and still to this day I am trying to reprogram my taste buds. These are two new veggies that I now Love! I am hoping for an abundance of these! I also am hoping to finally try my mother's Zucchini bread that I refused to eat as a child! LOL

Potatoes

I think these are what I am most excited about this year. I could eat potatoes every day if I had them on hand at all times. I bought the seeds online, but you can use overgrown ones that you have already! I am very excited to see how many I will get out of these! They are growing very well and look like they are starting to go to flower! I will harvest them as soon as the plant looks like it has died!

Asparagus

Asparagus is the type of plant that gets better each year that it comes back. This is our first year growing it and let's just say it defiantly doesn't look like what you would expect. They look like mini-Christmas trees. Although we may not get any of it to harvest this year, I am very excited for it to return each year bigger and better!

Cucumbers

Originally, early April we started a whole bunch of seedlings. Sadly, we started them too early. There was still frost outside and we didn't have big enough containers or enough space to keep them indoors. So, all of them died, except for my one cucumber plant! It was just barely hanging on when I transplanted it. Thankfully it stuck through and is now the biggest out of all of the other cucumber plants! The rest of them I started the seeds right in the soil bed and they seem to be doing well.

This is my first year of growing a bunch of crops. I hope that next year I can utilize my garden space better and have a variety of plants in-between each other! I tried to plant some Dill and Rosemary in-between the plants this year but only a few have survived and I'm not sure they will live for too much longer. I also plan on waiting a while longer to start my seedlings next year. That way I can be sure there won't be any threat of frost! Sometimes you need to fail now so that you can succeed in the future.

I believe it is very important to learn how to cultivate your own food. There are so many harmful additives in food from the store that most people wouldn't even blink an eye to! Although I will say I do eat a bunch of normal stuff everyone eats, I can't say I wasn't a bit grossed out while doing so! I feel so much better knowing exactly what it is going into our bodies! Not to mention the accomplishing feeling of harvesting the food that you grew! I hope this gave you some inspiration to start your own garden! Thank you for reading!

~Emily Creator of Emmy's Handmade Creations