Vegetable beds!

Since we bought our house with the worlds tiniest backyard I've been determined to homestead to the max . . . yup I just wrote homestead to the max! WOW!
anyways,
I've been reading a bit about the victory gardens wives use to build during the world wars. Little vegetable patches in their backyards. They were encouraged to grow their own vegetables to reduce pressure on the public food supply. And boost morale. This made victory gardens a huge part of life on the home front. I love the idea of growing your own food, and I think now is as good a time as any. There is so much concern over pesticide use, and food miles, and ethical treatment of workers. In your own vegetable patch, there are no food miles, no pesticides (if you choose) and the treatment of workers is usually pretty good :) Lee always gets a sandwich and a beer if he's been working in the yard.

I like keeping everything simple and on a small scale, which suits our life and our backyard perfectly. Our new vegetable beds are just that, simple and small :D
Here's the plan:
We have one bed that is 4 feet by 4 feet and another bed that has been cut on an angle to accommodate the fence.
The space between the two beds is just big enough to fit the lawn mower through.

We'll be using square foot gardening techniques, here's a really great book on the topic
All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew (and we'll also do another post about square foot gardening, just some basics later this month, :)
If you have a couple of small beds like we do, it's the BEST way to get the most yield out of them.
I am so excited to start planting and even more excited to start eating :)

Here's what's going in:

• Pea's- I love fresh pea's off the vine, even the big ones that kind of taste like dirty socks :) I have fantasy's of growing so many fresh pea's that we sit on the front porch in our rockers shelling peas, then packaging them up and we'll have peas all winter. But in reality I eat them all straight out of the pod before they'd make it to the front porch. The white trellis's are for the Peas to climb up :)

• Strawberries- I'm especially excited to put a bit of hay under each little bud :) It's the little things that make me excited haha
• Radishes-Lee is a radish maniac!
• Green onion- I eat them like they are going out of style. Especially with Pierogis and sour cream mmmmm . . . .
• Beets- The entire triangle bed is going to be beets. That bed gets a fair amount of shade so beets will do well there. And I can't wait to pickle some this summer!
• Lettuce- My mom says it's fool proof so I have to try it. We chose the BUTTERCRUNCH variety, that's the kind my mom and her neighbor grow.  I've had it and LOVE it. It's kind of like a cross between Green Leaf Lettuce and Romaine.
• There will also be a tomato plant or two growing in containers against the house :) 

I hope you'll be inspired to Start a little victory garden of your own, because if we can do it in the tiny backyard we've got, I'm sure just about anyone can :)
I declare VICTORY over high prices, haha Just kidding, I'm a dork :)