My Garden is a Battle Ground... and I'm Winning

Well, at least I *hope* I'm winning!  We have some of the biggest slugs I've ever seen here.  I'm pretty sure I've seen some the size of Sam.  Okay fine... most of them are 2 inches or so but I swear I saw one that was at least four!  We also have the cutest little snails ever.  But apparently all these puppies want to do is eat my garden.  No no no we're not going to have that. 

Lilo was looking out for us and sprinkled some of her leftover slug killer around the perimeter of the garden before I even knew we had a slug problem!  Now, I'm not usually one for pesticide use, but this stuff was wicked cool... in a gross way... it made the slugs explode!  Kind of.  I told Jesse it was like a slug graveyard around the garden.  Like I said, kind of gross... it looked like snot ;o)

We ran out of the poison so I checked out some more natural methods of containing the boogers... coffee grounds and egg shells :o)  They don't like the caffeine so they don't want to climb over that, and even if they do they *really* don't like climbing over the egg shells.

Ever since I completed the perimeter I haven't noticed a single slug or snail inside the garden.  Take that slugs!  (Now, the moles underneath might cause us some trouble... but we'll see how that goes.) 

Look what we have here!  There's a whole bunch!  I'm so excited... nothing beats the taste of fresh tomatoes.  The smell of them reminds me of my Dad (hi, Dad!) which reminds me that I haven't explained to you why gardening was on my bucket list (CHECK)...

I guess my love for eating healthier started as we started talking about getting preggo with baby one.  I didn't eat that great... I mean I've always loved veggies, but I wouldn't say I ate well balanced or anything.  The more I learned about eating healthy, the more I wanted home grown produce.  But we never had the space in our yards to even ask the landlords about a garden.  I was definitely interested in distancing us from the industrial food that may have questionable pesticides and what-not... and can't always afford (or find - in our case right now) organic food.  But I had to be content drooling over my neighbor's produce... or stealing from Dad's garden :o)

So now I have a garden.  And I'm one happy girl!  I really have my Love to thank for this, because he asked the landlady right off the bat if we could plant one, and then he spent hours digging up the soil and sifting out the stones for it.  All I really did was help put them in the ground... and I water it daily.  Oh, and line it with coffee grounds and egg shells ;o) 

There's nothing more fun than stepping outside your door and grabbing a bunch of fresh lettuce or a handful of basil for dinner!  I do wish I'd taken the opportunity back when I was home to learn more from the gardeners in my life (hi, Dad!)... but trial and error learning can be fun, right?  I can't wait till Lily gets to pick a tomato right off the vine and eat it! :o)

PS: photo credit for all three of these goes to Jesse.