Sometimes it’s hard to find enough space to grow everything you’d like to. There are some clever ways to grow more things in a smaller space, or even in your front yard landscaping if you just look for them. How could you find out how to make the most of your space? There are a few secrets that can help your food growing dreams become realities.
I love getting a new book. I adore books, and gardening books are my favorite. There is so much joy that comes from studying and dreaming about what things we could grow. This is our 5th year to grow food in our garden with success, and I am super stoked about what is to come this year.
Our first year in the garden we got way more than I ever dreamed, but I didn’t measure it in any tangible way. So we’ll just say we grew a wow amount of food. Our second year, we didn’t measure either, but we had a ton of fun.
In 2013, we started weighing our produce in order to measure our progress. Our year’s total was a whopping 664 pounds. At that time, we had a large pear tree producing and it put out 268 pounds of pears, the rest of that was garden fruits and veggies.
In 2014, we amped up our goal to 500 pounds of non-pear tree food and we smashed it with a total of 820 pounds of food!
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Last year our pear tree blew over in a storm and left us pear less. We were heart broken, but set our goal at 1,000 pounds of food overall. We have planted some fruit trees and they were loaded with fruit on their tiny frames, we had finished building an expansion to our garden, and we had all of the beds filled for the first time. This goal seemed doable. It was a year riddled with terrible weather, flooding and then incredible heat and drought. Many gardeners I know had no garden at all. Then we had an onslaught of animal pillages and bug overloads. Our goal of 1,000 pounds of food fell by the wayside as disaster after disaster struck our garden. We ended up with a very respectable 678 pounds of healthy, delicious, chemical free food. We were disappointed as well as blessed.
The goal at Little Sprouts is to grow as much of the food the daycare kids eat as we can. We want to provide them with chemical free, safe, and healthy food, and that’s what drives us. Check out more about why we are growing our own food here.
When I heard the title of this book, “Gardening Like a Ninja”, I was instantly interested. I knew this would help us make the most of our space. I went to Amazon and preordered the book and waited patiently for it to become available. When it arrived, the first thing I noticed is that it was stunning. The pictures on the front cover were so inviting and beautiful and as I flipped through the book, it was equally beautiful throughout.
Over the past few years we began tucking beautiful edibles into our landscaping to provide more food for us. When I saw “Gardening Like a Ninja”, I was so excited to find so many more ideas for how we can do even more of that. Many people have HOAs or other organizations that control what they are allowed to grow in the front yard. We don’t have such a thing in my neighborhood, but if we did, I know we could get away with growing how we are, because it’s just stunning. Check out my friend Shawna’s front yard garden by clicking here.
“Gardening Like a Ninja” is a guide to sneaking delicious edibles into your landscape. There are three parts to the book, why sneak edibles into your landscape, original edible garden designs, and plants that matter. The book covers all 4 seasons and how to create interest in each one. It also covers using your senses in the garden and different shapes, sizes and colors. There is even a section on garden basics for the beginner.
I love this book and have been pouring over and over every page for weeks. I have read every word and learned a ton of new ideas and information. I had never even thought about making my whole mailbox planter edible or how gorgeous strawberries would look in there.
The book addresses patio designs, small spaces, pathways, foundation plantings, corners, and all types of spaces. “Gardening Like a Ninja” also has information on different types of food such as peas, strawberries, melons, sweet potatoes, cilantro, sunflowers and whatever else you can think of that would look beautiful in your landscape design. I know I have used sweet potatoes as decorative plants many times. One year we planted them in our front flower bed and it was gorgeous all summer long. We got so many complements from the neighbors and my daycare families. At the end of the season, we dug them up and there were 89 POUNDS of sweet potatoes under all those gorgeous vines! WOWIE!
There is so much information packed into this book. It’s 175 pages of delightful photos and wonderful ideas about how to grow more food in little space. It helps us remember how gorgeous blueberry bushes are and how stunning asparagus ferns can be. Don’t forget to sneak some edibles into your landscape and enjoy even more food than you ever thought possible no matter how small your growing space is. We have ¼ of an acre here plus 20 x 80 feet in an empty field next door, and we are growing all of this food by making the best of the space we have. We still have to have space in the back yard for a playground for the daycare kids and we have a lot of very shaded areas back there, so we are doing a lot with a very small amount of land. Even if you are in an apartment, you can grow food in containers like my daughter is doing.
Get your kids out in the dirt and get your hands on this book right away so you can make the most of your space too!
Click here to check it out on Amazon.