Kim and I share the gardening duties, it's great to have a partner. She has taken on the task of researching the best seeds and plant varieties for our gardening zone and selecting the type and variety of plants that we want to grow. To start, she germinates the seeds hydroponically, which gives them robust roots and healthy leaves before moving them to pots. After a brief time, she moves them to their forever homes in the raised beds. This helps them to grow into healthy, disease-free, and insect-free plants. In her corporate life she spent years designing large databases for international companies, so the organization gene is in her DNA. Although we both share the day-to-day garden duties like weeding and watering, I tend to gravitate building and expanding, when possible, on our original design whenever I get the chance. The Vego gardens are the base of our garden and after initial set-up require little maintenance. Vego raised beds were the perfect Covid project for us and allowed us to join the “grow locally” community. The census for the US in the early 1900’s showed over 80% of the population participated in some way with agrarian jobs, and it is good to see lots of families getting back to their roots. Growing your own food is not only a green solution, it saves fuel needed to move crops to market, it also provides you and your family with the opportunity to experience fruit and vegetable varieties not typically available in big box stores. The most important thing is to have fun. Eating food, you have grown yourself is a rewarding and a wonderful experience for children to learn the value of hard work. At the end of the season last year, we added 60 dwarf fruit trees and are on a steep learning curve on how to best take care of them. This year we have lots of small apples growing, however, it looks like we will have to wait another year for the pear, peach, and apricot trees to catch up. To date, our gardens have been pesticide free, and we are using natural pest control and compost in lieu of fertilizers. We bought lady bugs on-line and released them as a natural form of pest control. We are waiting to see how they work out. We also use Neem oil to control unwanted insects. Most recently we added some fence covers to our beds to protect the new strawberry plants from local animals. The deer were enjoying the crop a little too much. So far, the protective panels have saved the plants from being nibbled on. We understand the animals are part of the natural ecosystem and we have started to plant things they enjoy eating more than sampling from the raised beds. So far it is working. In closing, anyone can do what we have done. Once we found the raised beds, we had the time to focus on the “what we want to do”, as the “how we were doing it” was taken care of. Whether you install one raised bed or ten, plant vegetables, flowers, berries or bushes, try it out, you will be rewarded.