Our first self sustaining family garden

We finally did it.  We started our first self-sustaining family garden.  I am so happy to be enjoying this with our sons and teaching them about being self sustaining and being out with nature.  We started with seeds and containers, since I thought it would be easier for them.  I had this old waist high cooler that's on wheels that we weren't doing anything with, so I figured with the wheels it would be easy to move around for different exposure to sunlight, etc.

We planted, zucchini, peas, squash, lettuce spinach, onions, peppers, pumpkins and cucumbers.  We also planted parsley and cilantro, but those went directly into the ground.

A couple of days after we started the containers, we hit the flea market and bought 4 tomato plants, 4 basil plants, and 1 oregano plant.

 Far Left: tomato plants, 2 Center rows are the parsley and cilantro.  Far right would be the oregano and basil, but I guess I didn't take a good enough picture to get them all in.

So it's a good thing I took this extra picture.

Bushy one in the back is the oregano and the 4 up front are Basil.

AND YESTERDAY

THE ZUCCHINI HAD SPROUTED!

Then Today

Pumpkin And Cucumber Sprouts

The kids were really excited yesterday when they got home from school and I took them outside to show them the zucchini sprouts, and today, when we picked them up I told them about the pumpkins and the cucumbers and they couldn't wait to get home to check them out.

We made a trip to Home Depot today for some tools, and I picked up two more plants, chives and dill, and came home and put them directly in the ground.

Now that I see them in the picture, I'm thinking they might be a little bit too close together, so I may have to buy another herb plant, and then move the chives over a bit (I'm also planning to put my other onions in this flower bed).  Tomorrow, we'll be clearning a new patch of dirt in the yard to transplant the zucchini, and as more of our seedlings start to sprout, we'll clear patches of the yard to transplant.  Once the container garden seed crop is transplanted into soil, we'll start growing new stuff, and rotate all our crops as we go.

I am going to buy a small green house from Amazon for growing certain things in at certain times of the year, but I found some extremely creative ideas for homemade green houses on the Survivalist forum that are made of just scrap wood and things like scrap windows and sliding glass doors that people just give away when they do new stuff to their house. 

I've even taken to browsing Craigslist a few times a day to see what people are getting rid of free or just cheap, that I can use to make our family more 'self sustaining.'