If at all possible, grow some food.  We have lots of gardening space and I don’t take advantage of it like I should, but, I love, love, love getting food out of my backyard.

Gardening is something we can and should do for ourselves.  It’s not like raising a milk cow or anything.  It’s planting seeds or seedlings and keeping them weeded and watered.  God does all the hard parts.

I’ll let you in on my little watering secret.  I use my sprinkler.  We have raised beds confined by cinder blocks so any excess only goes down, not out and away.  I just turn the cheapy sprinkler on and go in the house and set my timer for 7 minutes.  So easy.

Organic Gardening is easier than you realize.  It’s kinda like frugal living.  It’s more about not doing stuff than it is about doing stuff.   Find a good organic gardening book that is suited to your climate.  My favorite for our area is called Howard Garrett’s Texas Organic Gardening.

I harvested my first broccoli of the season on Saturday.

These heads are much bigger than they look, I don’t know how they look so puny.

The plants look like they’ve been murdered, but not so.  These headless broccoli plants will continue to produce, they’ll start making little “shoots” all around the cut area.  It won’t make another big head, just lots and lots of little florets.  And I’ll be able to harvest bowlfuls and bowlfuls of florets over and over again all winter long, and maybe part of early spring.

We currently have 32 broccoli plants in varying stages of development.   We may turn green from all the broccoli we’ll be eating over the next  several weeks.  Good thing we all love broccoli!

So, although this is an incredibly low cost way to get organic vegetables, the best part is teaching your children about gardening, nutrition and composting.

We just planted our newest broccoli last Friday, and Billy Bones and
Cannonball Jack (ages 12 and 10) did all the planting.  I had to laugh though.  We couldn’t find any trowels.  It happens.  Maybe they were buried in the sandbox, who knows.  But those Pirates were rather resourceful.  Cannonball used an old frosting can.  Billy Bones used a rock.  What a hoot!  But they got the job done.

Now it’s your turn.  Share your helpful hints and practical tips for raising a large family.  Write your Help for Growing Families post and link here with my Mister Linky.  For more details click here.

Feel free to link more than one post if you have plenty of relevant posts.

And don’t forget to leave a comment!

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