February 28, 2012

Creating Raised Garden Beds

I’ve always wanted to be the person who’s grows their own vegetables. In cute little raised garden beds in the backyard, when it was time to cook I could just walk out back and grab my ingredients. I remember summers growing up where we headed to Pennsylvania to visit my Great Grandfather, he had a huge garden in his back yard. One whole side of the yard was corn stalks and I remember going out before dinner and picking corn to bring inside and cook. How cool is that?

A few weeks ago I finally decided to stop putting it off and do it. This also may be because “grow a garden” is also on my list of this to do by 30 and I am turning 30 in June!! (This 30 things to do by 30 is a whole post of it’s own for another day). So I set off to Home Depot to get my seeds, and also got some of those “Burpee” system planters, you know the kind where you can just plant the whole container into your outside garden when they sprout. I finished by getting some soil and set off home to start my garden!! I started with 3 varieties of peppers, roma tomatoes, onions, and squash.

Here’s my garden on Day 1:

I placed them in my front living room on the couch in front of a big window so that they got optimal light. I checked on them everyday and watered them if they needed it. About a week went by and nothing!! Then finally I went to check on them on day 6 and sprouts had appeared!! I was so excited that I had to text a picture of my sprouts to my husband at work. Yes it was that exciting!!

 

That was about a week and a half ago. The row to the far right is all squash, they are growing the quickest. They’ve gotten so big that I don’t think it’d be possible to keep them inside for the 9 weeks that package recommends. They were starting to droop and that was my sign that it was time to start the next step of moving the garden outside. The time had come to head to Home Depot and gather supplies. My original idea was to do the garden all in pots. I thought it would be the easiest way to plant them and not have to worry about weeds. After loading up on pots, soil, and mulch, I noticed a whole shelf of raised garden systems. This started an internal debate and I decided to go with the raised beds. The beds I choose are 4ft x 4ft squares. My plan is to have 4 squares total eventually. For now I started with on square as they are $30 each. I loaded up with my new garden box and lots of soil and headed home to start my project.
I got a watering can because I felt like I needed one, I know I could just use the hose but having a watering can makes me feel like a real gardener! That little potted plant in the front is the beginning of what will eventually become a Blueberry bush. They also had a fig tree which I didn’t get, but I think I might have to get one on my next trip to Home Depot. We had avocado with out dinner the other night and my husband has kept the seeds and has started the process of trying to grow avocado trees from them. It’s a first time experiment for us, so we shall see how it goes.
After getting home and picking the perfect spot in our large back yard: one that get’s optimal sun and would be far enough out that it won’t be bothered by our future deck project. The first step was to clear the area of grass and weeds. I did the best I could, luckily we don’t have tons of actual grass in our yard at the moment. Next step was to put together the garden box and was ready to start filling the boxes with garden soil.
I decided to line the box with weed paper to hopefully make it easier to keep the box weed free. We had plenty of leftover from redoing the front flower beds. Once the boxes were filled with soil it was time to start transplanting my squash sprouts to their new home. You can see my garden assistant, Lucky, there in the corner supervising. He eventually got tired and took a nap on the job!
After all that it was finally time to plant my squash in their rightful place and start my garden!! I’m really excited about this. When I finally get the whole garden finished, I’m going to get a little garden gnome to watch over it. After a couple of hours work out in the hot sun I finally completed garden square numero UNO!! As you can see my assistant woke up from his nap just in time to show off our handy work.

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