The Homeschool Village is hosting a Garden Challenge that anyone can participate in ~ even if you don’t have garden space! Here is what Homeschool Village has to say:

We are encouraging our community to garden by joining The HSV Garden Challenge! Even if you have one tomato plant on your back porch, herbs in your window sill, or acres for potatoes … share your plan, planting, cultivating, and harvest photos with us throughout the months of March, April, May & June — and you will be entered to win a $20 visa card to use at your local grocery store!

To participate:
Join us and share once per month March 31st, April 28st, May 26th, and June 30th – sharing your latest garden update. Include: 1 current photo, progress, lessons/resources being used, and homeschooler’s reaction / involvement! This month they are asking for something that you (mom) have learned, and the first dish you will/have cooked with your garden bounty!

In true NY form the weather is still not cooperating. It has been raining almost non-stop this whole month. Despite that, we were still able to plant all of our seeds inside and place them in our bay window at the beginning of the month.  They need a few weeks to grow into decent sized seedlings before we drag them out into the harsh NY weather!

All we have inside to start our seedlings is a small bay window.  We squeezed them in last year, but with the expansion we are planning we have MANY more seeds to plant for our garden this year.  To account for this Joey made an extension table for the window so that we would have room for all of our planters! We moved the fish tank that was in front of this window to the living room for the month or so that we need to have the space for planting.

The kids always love this part of the process. They each helped us to do the planting. Jayden and Ava did a great job of working together to fill the bigger pots with soil and get the seeds for some of our flowers planted in them.

Chloe spent time labeling the pots and working with Joey to seed and label all of our peet moss planters. Each one was labeled with a letter A-D and then broken into 6 rectangle divisions. Then the seeds were planted and a coordinating paper grid was made so we would know which seeds were in what containers.

Our big problem this year is that the kids were a little to enthusiastic with the watering! We did not realize how much they had been watering because of the catch trays around the biodegradable peet moss cups they were in.  I had to drain all the water out, but mold had already formed!  Not sure how many of our seedlings will survive!  Only time will tell!

Despite all the rain we managed to get out and get started on the actual digging of the garden expansion. It was slow going and not fun because it was very heavy, we mud, instead of dry dirt and grass to dig up.

We have since finished digging out the entire area behind the shed, but due to the continued rain we have been unable to rake it level, add the 2 4×8 wooden boxes for the beds, and get them filled with the planting mix we are planning on using. Hopefully in the next week or two that will get done as well as adding the posts, and fencing around the area.

Our first “dish” so to speak that will come from our garden is our cucumber salad. The kids love to take the fresh picked cucumbers and have me slice of some of the skin, cut them fancy, and put them in an Italian style dressing mix. Beyond that it will lightly sauteed veggies, and hopefully some nice head of cauliflower!