Ever since we bought our first house a year and a half ago, we've dreamed of having a vegetable garden. But when I got pregnant two months after we moved in, those plans got pushed aside for more immediate and necessary concerns like creating a nursery and finding me a pool I could float my giant belly in all summer.
Now that it's spring and Sadie is almost 6 months old, the time is ripe, and this weekend we're finally going ahead with our big plans. Now -- let me disabuse you of the notion that we have ANY IDEA what we're doing. Neither of us has ever taken on a project like this before. If building the actual planter boxes were not daunting enough, having a working vegetable garden also requires the ability to keep plants alive once they have been placed in dirt. My trial run involved buying two extremely hardy house plants, which have survived for a good 8 months at this point, so I consider myself ready to move to the next level.
As of right now, here's the plan: Saturday we'll be constructing the actual planter boxes, Sunday we'll do the planting. For the boxes we'll be using untreated 6' redwood beams between planter posts -- very basic stuff, nothing fancy like ledges or anything like that. The four boxes will be placed end-to-end along the side of our backyard, where there is currently an ugly dirt strip that runs from the side of our house all the way to the wall at the end of the yard. It's a somewhat odd configuration, but the boxes will hide the otherwise useless dirt, and will also get some measure of shade from the tall ficus trees that line our neighbors' yard.
I don't really know yet what we'll be planting, although I have a few ideas: tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, carrots, radishes, spinach, arugula. We'll be buying all our plants pre-grown, or whatever the correct term is, rather than trying to negotiate seeds.
In addition, we'll be adding some large pots to put between the planter boxes. This will be for my herb garden and also possibly for some strawberries, blueberries and other fruits. I honestly don't know. When I say we don't know what we're doing, I mean it -- our entire body of research has come from articles on the internet entitled, "How to Grow Fruits and Vegetables in Planter Boxes." Yesterday I was discussing plans with the babysitter and she suggested buying mulch to spread on top of the dirt, and I was like, "Ah yes, mulch! Excellent idea!" So...this could work out great, or I could end up inadvertently murdering a small army of plants.
I hope they don't fight back.
I'm so jealous! Your garden's going to be awesome!
ReplyDeleteYour Dad has experience with this. He once planted carrots in the middle of a rock bed. They grew like gangbusters, even if they were a bit oddly shaped.
ReplyDeleteIt's also impossible to kill radishes, which is why they are a popular backyard crop. Unfortunately they're also inedible. Not even the squirrels want them.