Veggie Garden 101

Let's be honest, this post will not be the complete A to Z on gardens.

I know VERY LITTLE about them and do not, in any way, claim to be an expert.

However, after this weekend I feel I have become a bit more educated about them and am ready to pass along what I have learned to anyone who would also like to take on this pretty simple project that yields a great reward.

Most of what I learned, I learned from pinterest (of course).  There are some great tips on there, and great direction to some pretty handy websites.

For example, did you know that...

broccoli loves celery

carrots love tomatoes, peas, and lettuce

cucumbers love beans and peas

tomatoes thrive near carrots, cucumbers, and onions

and basil improves tomatoes

You gotta love all the love!

So, this weekend, my family built a small, raised bed in our backyard and set out to make the most loving and harmonious garden that we could.

This is what we started with.  It isn't a huge area, but we have gophers like you would not believe and this is the most protected area that is surrounded by patio which the gophers haven't gone under (yet).  

I (I say "I" because this is really the only part of the garden I had a direct hand in.  All my boys pretty much did the rest.) cleared away all the bark, buckets, and little white pick up trucks and got the dirt underneath all nice and turned up.

My husband got some railroad ties from my in-laws and made a box that he filled in with garden soil.  It has lots of good things in it like fertilizer, worm castings, kelp meal, chicken manure, gypsum, etc.  Many goodies that my plants will love.

We put the boys to work packing it down.  You don't want it too tightly packed or you will lose some of the oxygen in the soil, so little boys who don't weigh much work well for this and they thought it was really fun.  Win-win!

This is the bed all finished and ready for planting.

We planted tomatoes in the back with the wire (I put egg shells and aspirin in the soil as this website suggested.  I Chose to leave out the fish heads.), onions, cilantro (yes, we make a lot of salsa), broccoli, bell peppers, lettuce, and cucumbers.

Here it is all finished.  Hopefully the spacing will work out for us.  It is a small garden that just shows that you don't need much space.  I am excited for the yummy veggies and even the lessons for our boys that will come out of this little patch of dirt.

I'll keep you posted on our progress.  This is definitely a work in progress since we have never done this before.

With a little water and sun, hopefully we will be enjoying our garden in a couple months.  Yum!

Happy Tuesday everyone and here are a few more links that helped us...
companion planting
raised garden beds