Green House Hobby

By observation Justin and I figured gardening in Germany had to be fairly easy. We both love to work in the yard and see things grow, so we splurged on a green house. We have found a hobby we both enjoy doing together and that our kids can do with us.
With Justin's experience working at his family's green houses and after asking mom and dad Schmidt a few questions we got started.

We first planted in the plugs, not shown here. Once they sprouted we transplanted them to the pots/trays shown below. Then after the last freeze we transplanted them to our garden boxes.

This being our first year we definitely learned a lot, mostly from failures.

One lesson being that squash and corn plants do NOT like to be transplanted, ha. Which we did twice. Oops
We also planted them way too early with everything else, and in a spot where tree roots sapped the ground of water and nutrients.

Since we do not own a truck, we had a dump truck deliver soil for our garden boxes. Yes, it was dumped on our driveway. Sam could have played in it every day for a week I'm sure, but we had to get it in the back yard that day with shovel and wheel barrow. Sam was definitely ready to help. :)

This is our main garden box. It is the sunniest part of our yard. We love having all our trees, but it did make it a bit difficult to find a spot for a vegetable garden.

 We ended up with a ton of tomato and basil plants, too many. We planted just the right amount of green beans and beets. Meaning that we ate what we grew. Too many tomatoes were thrown away and the tomato plants we had did not thrive. We're guessing it was because we planted too many too close, trying to use them all.

 This is where the squash and watermelon plants struggled to bear little to no fruit. Darn it.

 Our flower boxes turned out pretty. We had great success with our zinnies, alysum, but figured out they are better for flower beds instead of boxes.

 Our neighbor Irmela gave us sunflowers that I kept forgetting to water, but they did okay.

I was able to try several recipes with our home grown basil, parsley, and cilantro!

Yes Justin made a batch of fresh salsa -- which was delicious! I think we liked it so much because it all came from our garden, onions, tomatoes, cilantro.

Overall I think we had a successful garden. It grew and we ate some of it. Justin on the other hand saw the prices and yield percentage and felt like we failed. Ha ha, we both agree we have room for improvement. Both of us are excited for next years growing season.