Passing on a love for gardening

My 13 year old son has caught the gardening bug.  He put in (with very little help from me) a winter garden of lettuce, spinach, parsnips, beets and turnips.  The beets and turnips didn't come up.  I guess we put them out too late.  The lettuce and spinach did great.  The parsnips were a bust, even though they came up.  I got something like 6 itty bitty ones.  We'll try again later.

But, he wants to put in an extensive garden this spring.  He researched things like oats, buckwheat, millet and quinoa.  Plus the things that I call a "salad garden" - lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc. We started planning for this spring.  I will start home schooling him tomorrow, and we're including gardening in his science curriculum.  Here in Texas, we can start things in February inside, to transplant out side by March 15.

We have researched the start dates in our zone for all that we want to plant.  We have a 4 ft X 8 ft raised garden bed.  He plans on planting the grains next to the fence row.  It will be a privacy addition as well as breaking up the soil a bit.

I'll let you know how it goes.

I guess you can say my garden is doing well this year.  I just pulled a 4.5 pound zucchini.  It had gotten up against the sideboard of the raised bed and missed for a while. 

I'm still battling cancer (it came back in January and I won't find out if it's in remission again until my insurance company allows another PET scan).  I only planted a little, so I would be able to manage it.  We had plans of adding a couple more raised beds, but decided against it.  I planted green beans (which I've had about 5 meals for a family of four and just gave a quart bag to my in-laws), cucumber (big harvest, also gave 4-5 to my in-laws), 2 zucchini plants, and one tomato.  I planted about 6 tomatoes but only one came up.  I've made zucchini bread and had zucchini on the grill at least 5 times.  I planted strawberries, from Big Lots, but they all died.  My brother-in-law gave us two seedless blackberry bushes and a blueberry bush.  The harvest this year has only been good enough to let my son eat a few as they come ready.  I planted the two blackberries where there wasn't enough sun and they almost died.  I moved them, and about half came back (of each plant).  Hopefully next year will be better.

One of my "cucumber" plants ended up being a cantaloupe.  I don't know if it was volunteer in the compost or a miss filed seed from the heritage seeds.  It's got a little 2 inch cantaloupe and a tiny one about a half inch.