First Project- The Garden

I thought about it on and off all day and I have decided that the garden should be the first project we tackle. Like anything thing else we do, the garden has gone from a simple planter to offset the cost of our veggie and fruit bill

into a full blown orchard, garden and pumpkin patch. I'm sure that the simple garden never had a fighting chance anyway. In this household, we are good at making things way bigger than need be. We can rarely do anything on a small reasonable scale. However because of this trait we have the room for said garden, pumpkin patch and mini orchard because we also bought a house that has a yard that can handle my farmers market. (paid 50k over our home buying budget too, go figure) Anyhow onto the mission. I am a visual person and love to look up pictures before starting projects. Some of my favorite gardens  are

And what would any garden be without lights?

So the planning begins. I am a lover of organization but I am stumped by our V shaped yard. I would ideally like to have 3 garden beds, an herb box and my husband wants 4 trees- citrus, apple, peach and avocado. We also have to plan for the other items that we would like to have in our yard in the future like a splash pad and one of those huge (surprise) swing set fort things. Here is our yard now (actually the day we signed our papers 7 months ago), or 'BEFORE' if you will...

The yard looks way better now than it does in this pic but lets use this pic for the extra dramatic effect lol. Our first progress picture will make it look like we already made leaps and bounds ;-) OK- so what do I want to plant? I want onions, carrotts, celery lettuce, beans, strawberries, broccoli, lettuce, peppers and Im sure I will think of more. We also want a herb garden and we found an awesome way to plant herbs

Rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil, chives etc. I am probably the most excited about the herb garden because it should smell divine! A side note to all of this is that we have rabbits and birds that I am sure will be dining freely on our beautiful creations so we will have to plan for that as well.
Last year we planted Giant Dill Atlantic pumpkins (300-500 pounds- told you we can't do anything small) in May... oops because I should have planted them in February or March. Lesson learned and so this year we will be ready! But hey, last year wasn't a total loss, the kids had fun and nothing says 'It's Fall' like a pumpkin patch at your house! We will also add a couple of different types of pumpkins. Our 3 year old is ecstatic about it and that makes us just as anxious to get them going :-)
Now that we have an overview of this project complete with pictures and goals and annoucing it on the internet, I hope that in a couple of weeks or less I will have progress pictures to share with you!