Vegetable Garden -- Part I

Well, I do not know what I am doing when it comes to gardening. I did not do much gardening as a kid, so Nick has taught me a lot. First off, Nick was taught by his dad, who is amazing in the garden. His dad recently showed us how their backyard via Skype and it looks like a little Oasis. We are not going for Oasis at this time, we are growing a vegetable garden. Yep...lots of edibles and I am soooo excited.  

This will be the first of a few posts about our vegetable garden, so I will call this the 'prepping' stage. 

First, we decided to do a raised garden bed. Nick went to Home Depot and bought three 3x8x12 untreated boards. Had them rip one in half to it made a 4’x8’ bed that was 12” high. Took 15 minutes to build the box with decking screws, then he coated in a Thompson water seal. The box was filled with 1 yard of garden mix from a local nursery. Nick filled up the back of his truck and shoveled it into the box. It cost $30 for the boards, $35 for the soil. Not bad!

We bought seeds at home depot and we are planting the following: bell peppers, zucchini, green beans, carrots, onion, lettuce, spinach, basil, cilantro, sweet potatoes and tomatoes all in that 1 garden box!!!!  We split box into  1 foot squares and planted the vegetables by the foot. 

Here are some great tools that Nick found to plan out our garden. 

Here’s planting schedules for our zone, you can find others on this website too:
http://www.thevegetablegarden.info/resources/planting-schedules/zones-5-6-planting-schedule

Here’s the garden plotter site where you can put in your garden size and it will tell you how many to plant in each location. Pay attention to the planting instructions and “learn more” at the bottom -  some really good info:
http://www.gardeners.com/on/demandware.store/Sites-Gardeners-Site/default/Page-KGPJS

Here’s a soil volume calculator if you’re doing raised beds:
http://www.gardeners.com/Soil-Calculator/7558,default,pg.html

So once we figured out what could be planted in the ground and what needed to stay inside until the chance of freeze was gone, we started. Here are our seedlings growing and tomato plants in the garage. 

We also built a gate so that we can get in and out of our garden and so it is protected from little pesky animals, like our dogs and rabbits. 

So Nick built the gate and then I made it pretty. We used our projector upstairs to project the design that I made onto the gate and we traced it with pencil. Then I took it into the garage and started painting. I am pretty happy with the way it turned out. 

The next post will have everything planted and our fence around the garden. I hope we have lots to eat this summer. 

Lastly, I am ending with a picture of Shiloh. She is getting so big, almost 50 pounds. Yikes!!

Hope this inspires you to get out there and garden!!!

- Court - 

Catching Up—Our Puppy and Breakfast Ideas!

Wow, it has been over a month since my last post. I have been slacking big time!  There have been a lot of things going on that have led to my business and lack of time to blog. One of the biggest consumers of my time is our new puppy Shiloh! This is Reagans sister, Corynne already blogged about him - here.

Man—having a puppy is a LOT of work! She runs our lives at the moment, but I absolutely love it. She is a crazy little sweetheart and I laugh so much when her and Dixie play together. We were a little worried about getting a 2nd dog (especially a puppy) since Dixie is a little special. She is very skiddish and not very playful, but they are doing great and Dixie is more playful! Having Dixie has actually helped entertain Shiloh, I cannot imagine having a puppy in the house without another dog, she would be chewing on all our furniture. Here are some cute photos, I cannot get enough of my girls.

In other news, Nick and I took a trip to Nashville to celebrate our 5 Year Anniversary. It was a blast and I will write about it soon.

I wanted to share a few healthy breakfast recipes that I have tried recently. I try to avoid eating a lot of baked goods and especially things with a lot of flour, so I found some good breakfast options on Pinterest that satisfy my craving for baked goods. You should try some of these out:
Banana and Oatmeal Muffins (follow the link) - these are great and I have been eating them all week. I also topped them with a little almond butter for breakfast. YUM!

Ingredients:
2.5 cups old fashioned oats
1 cup plain low fat greek yogurt
2 eggs
1/2 cup honey
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 TBSP ground flax seed
1 tsp vanilla
2 ripe bananas 

Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spray tin with non-stick cooking spray or line 12 muffin tins with silicone or foil liners.
2. Place the oats in the food processor and pulse for about 10 seconds.  Add remaining ingredients to the food processor. 

3. Process until everything is mixed together and oats are smooth.
At this point in the process, you can separate the batter into two different bowls, adding dark chocolate chips to one and walnuts to the other (as desired).  

 4. Divide batter among cupcake liners, and bake for 15-20 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.

I also made the Biggest Looser Oatmeal Pancakes. These were awesome too and you can make extra to heat up for on the go breakfast. One morning I cut up apple slices and added some almond butter. 

Biggest Looser Oatmeal Pancakes

Ingredients:

6 egg whites

1 cup rolled oats, dry

1 cup cottage cheese

2 teaspoons sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions:

In a blender, blend all ingredients until smooth. Heat a griddle or large non-stick skillet over medium-low heat. Spray with non-stick cooking spray. For each pancake pour 1/4 cup of batter onto griddle. Flip when they start to bubble. Cook until golden brown. Repeat with remaining batches, spraying the griddle as needed. Makes about 10 pancakes.

Number of Servings: 3

Nutritional Info Per Serving:

181 Calories, 2.7g Fat, 10mg Cholesterol, 361mg Sodium, 20g Carbs, 2.8g Fiber

And I have to end with more doggy pictures. 

Until next time—
Courtney