Do you have an organic gardening? Whether you’re new to gardening or an experienced gardener, there’s something for everyone in this series on organic gardening.

Our New Series on Organic Gardening
I’m very thrilled to be partnering with The Home Depot for a series on organic gardening this spring!
Here are the other posts in this series:
- Organic Gardening with Kids: Planting
- Organic Gardening: Dealing with Animals
- Animals, Pepper, and Organic Gardening
We started gathering our organic vegetable gardening supplies last fall, when we raked up our leaves:

Jumping in the leaves is super fun, it’s fantastic exercise, AND it compacts the leaves so that they fit in the compost bin a little better! We put them in our compost bin to turn into dirt during our LONG (sort of still hanging in there) winter:

We haven’t purchased plants or seeds yet for this year – we’ll do that once we are home from sunny Florida. I’m planning to have each of the kids take care of their own tomato plant this year, and we will add some other plants as well. Sugar snap peas (see the top photo from this post) are my personal favorite, so they will definitely make the list! Do you have other plants that you recommend we grow?
We have pulled the plants from last year out of our raised garden beds – I just need to add the soil from the compost bin to top it off.

The kids are super excited about gardening with their new rakes and shovels that they will be using to help in the garden! I love that organic gardening is also kid-friendly gardening – no worrying about chemicals! I also love gardening since it is a fun thing for me to do while I watch the kids in the yard. And even my normally-fussy eater is eager to eat vegetables from our home garden!

I have a copy of Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening out from the library (thank you, Elisa, for the recommendation!), and hope that that will help me maximize our gardening space!
Are you going to be growing an organic garden this spring? Do you have any organic gardening tips to share?
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This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of The Home Depot.
MaryAnne is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.
I’m experimenting with square foot gardening this year. I finally built a raised bed in the only spot in our back yard that gets both reasonable sun, isn’t on our tiny lawn, and that I can get water to when I am on vacation. I bought wood for two, but decided that there was only one spot that met the criteria, I have to see if I can fix the water part, and then perhaps there will be room for two. April is well into the growing season here, our tomatoes are doing great! So are our cucumbers and beans. I’m trying to grow a watermellon this year, that was what Rebecca wanted. We’ll see. Unfortunately nothing I planted from seed has really sprouted, because the squirels keep digging through the bed, probably to get not fully composted compost bits. Seems to have slowed down so perhaps it is time to re-seed!
I read Square Foot Gardening and would love to try it out. The book makes it all sound so easy. I’m hoping we will be able to keep a garden wherever we end up next. I’m pretty terrible at growing things (except zucchini which I’ve been successful with) but I love trying.
I hope you do end up getting gardening to work in your next home!
we need to get our little spring garden going too! i like those little tools. having a problem finding quality ones like that for Bear to use.
I found these at Michaels!
I haven’t done any successful gardening with the kids yet but I know they would love it. My sister composed and had a great garden a couple years ago. It was a real Cape Cod one too with seaweed mulch!
That is so cool that your sister used seaweed mulch!
It’s so wonderful that you make your own compost. Please post on that. Is it difficult? Smelly? Do you need a big yard? Do animals get into it? I’d love to hear about your experience! Then, I might try it too but we have a very small yard.
I’ll have to write a post about it! It is pretty easy and doesn’t stink, and you do not need a large yard. We only had an animal problem with ours once, and that is because a deer (accidentally, I think) jumped on it and broke our bin!
I have never had a garden, but I would love to do the raised garden like yours. Did you purchase the pieces or build it? I think I remember an old post about it, but I’m not sure. I’m completely clueless and have a black thumb, but I know my kids would love it.
You have a good memory! We purchased a kit that was super easy to just snap together, and I’ve been very happy with it. I actually built it with the kids’ help, which tells you how easy it was! Here is my old post: https://www.mamasmiles.com/learning-laboratory-gardening/
We just planted strawberries and peppers that we got from Home Depot. The strawberries came in biodegradable pots – love that!
So fun to be planning your garden!
My friend have an organic garden… my friend used also organic fertilizer..
As I don’t know when we will be building and moving I am very hesitant in starting a garden here at this location BUT I do have a few large pots that I started 2 years ago: two have blueberry and cranberry plants and last summer we even already had a few blueberries! One small cherry tree in a lrage pot which I hope to plant in the open one day. Tomatoes, peas and beans are great to grow with kids.
I also recommend zucchini, though the plant does get HUGE!
Mangold is also something my mother-in-law has and she had it almost all winter, too, making a dish I love: savory Palatschinken (crepes) filled with mangold and Feta and then melt cheese on top! It’s supposed to be much healthier than spinach.
Thanks for the post – maybe ii will do something more this year. Oh yes, strawberry plants, of course, and if you know you’ll be staying at this home longer it’s worth planting raspberries… we just love berries and cherries!!!
This is awesome!! I”m so excited! I’m arranging to have square foot beds put in soon, one for each of my kids (fits perfectly across my front porch). I found a supplier who will give me organic soil and local vegetable planting tips, and I’m looking forward to learning a lot from him and getting some produce from the gardens this time around. :)
I love that each of your kids is getting their own square foot bed! And hooray for finding a high quality local supplier!
I forget if it was on your blog or another friend’s I said this, but I suck at gardening. I love the results, but suck at following through on anything after planting.
I don’t have my own organic garden, but I cultivate a plot in a community garden where organic gardening is required. No chemicals! I have to lug my kitchen scraps over there, but it’s also nice that someone else tends the compost pile for me. :)
I love that you have a community organic garden!
Yep, we’ll be growing an organic garden this summer. Our tip is to think about companion planting. For instance, planting marigolds in your vegetable garden will help keep away some pests..they don’t like the smell of marigolds. Can’t wait to see how your garden grows.
Thanks for the tip! We planted marigolds last year, but just because I thought they would be pretty. It’s great to know that they double as pest control!
Since our yard is so small and sun limited, we got pallets from Benj’s work and I stapled burlap around them. One I put sideways next to our door that gets a lot of sun and the other is on our back patio! They have made great gardens so far! I would reccomend to plant some chard. Ours is growing like crazy and I can’t wait to eat it!!! Can’t wait to see you soon!
Meg, you are brilliant! I would love to see pictures of your pallet gardens, if you have any? We’ll make sure to plant chard, too, thanks for the recommendation!
Very excited to see you soon!
We are going to try tomatoes again this spring. The bugs have eaten them in previous years.
I hope the bugs stay away from your tomatoes this year!
I’m impressed Mary Anne! Your kids are going to love watching those veggies grow this summer! I wish we had a place for a garden!!
Thank you, Jamie! We are very fortunate to have the space!!!
We’re doing a garden in our side yard this year. Our potted strawberries survived the winter and are already flowering. I’m looking forward to eating their deliciousness this year since I’ve been told by many sources that strawberries do better in year 2. We planted lots of green (pole) beans, a few green bell pepper plants, and two types of cucumbers. One of our cucumber plant is taking over our planter box! We’re ok with it since we love cucumbers. I just hope the pepper plant isn’t too blocked and gets enough sun. I agree with you about picky eaters even eating veggies from the garden. There’s just something special about growing it yourself and taking pride from it.
Our strawberries definitely did better their second year; unfortunately the chipmunks still got them before we did! I need to look into chipmunk proofing this year!