Gardening became a passion the day I learned about this.

I'm not the most "green" of people.  Those of you who know my political side would say that's an understatement.  This post may confuse people that know me for my political leanings but I assure you that I am not joining Al Gore's Cult.  I am, however, very, very excited about things that grow.  In another life I may have been a farmer but only if it was as easy as it is now, under the tutelage of Mel.
Last year before Spring I went to a wonderful meeting where the Square Foot Gardening concept was introduced.  In this meeting they had some examples of gardens and dirt...yup, dirt.  I was a somewhat reluctant student because I honestly felt like the whole premise behind Square Foot Gardening was a bit too good to be true.  After listening in an uncomfortable chair for a couple of hours and caring for my newborn enjoying the growth of new life I think something inside me changed a little bit.  I have been an advocate of gardens ever since we bought our house.  We've had gardens for most of the five years since we moved into the house with varied success and effort.  After building our first square foot garden last spring we will never do gardening another way.  We planted corn, sweet peas, cucumbers, beets, onions, peppers, pumpkin, carrots, flowers (mixed including sunflowers) and tomatoes all from seed right in the Mel's Mix.  We harvested as well as we ever did with a row garden but we didn't have to worry about weeds.  We found that cucumbers were fine as long as we gave them a head start on other plants that might shade them.  We found that pumpkins grow vines that overrun an entire garden.  We learned a lot about gardening last year.  This year we started things earlier and we're trying more.  I hope to get more harvested this year than last year which should be easy because we know more about rotating, and plant times.  Check the garden pics below to see how we're doing so far.