What's in my garden this year?

Since I took a break from gardening last year, I'm itching to start my garden this year! I find it extremely therapeutic to nurture plants and watch them grow. My girls love watching them grow and helping to harvest!

Not only do I get to pick what vegetables I want to plant this year, but I also get to pick a new location. While this feels like starting from scratch again, I really don't mind. I'm excited to start fresh!

First is to choose the right location.

I'm thinking I want to move it closer to our chicken coop and closer to where our barn will eventually go up. When doing chores, I try to make it convenient and will consolidate chores to make less trips back to the house.

I will need to think about a water source. I don't mind hauling water, but I don't want to do it more than 3 times in a row.

I plan on composting and using my own nutrient rich soil.

I just bought one of these table top compost bins so I have a good place for scraps. We've just been using Tupperware containers or glass bowls for scraps for the chickens. It's not aesthetically pleasing to look at a bowl full of half-eaten food scraps.

Here's what's on my list to start:

1. Cucumbers - I really enjoy cucumbers in my salads and the chickens love them too. I have grown some previously and had good luck.

2. Tomatoes - again, I enjoy tomatoes in my salad or on burgers, etc. and have had good luck growing cherry tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes and San Marzano tomatoes.

3. Zucchini and yellow squash - we love grilling vegetables in the summer. I had like 6 plants or something; waaaaayyyy too much. I will scale down this year.

4. Peppers - I had one pepper plant and only harvested 2 peppers. I will likely plant more this year.

5. Eggplant - I LOVE eggplant parm and the way my mom cooks them. When they start to grow, they are the CUTEST. Definitely looks like an egg growing, and it's so cool to watch it get bigger!

6. Jalapeños - I grew one plant last year but got many jalapeños from just the one plant. So I'll probably do 1 or 2 plants this year.

This weekend I'm going to head over to Runnings to buy some seeds. I'll start them indoors to get them hearty enough before moving them outside. I've had much better success doing it this way than by trying to start with seeds outside.

Anyone have any other suggestions? I'm curious about growing broccoli - Ava loves broccoli, but I've never tried it.

I'm also interested in trying pumpkins and watermelon! We'll see what I come up with this weekend and I'll do a follow up post for when we start our seeds.