A lot has happened for me in the past few weeks and the thing that I am MOST excited to share with you about is my new little garden! I have been researching and planning it for about a month and even went to the store a couple times to get things I needed, and then came home empty-handed because I didn't feel quite prepared enough. It is my first time planting my own garden, let alone BUILDING one!
Growing up, my birth-dad and step mom had a very large garden, a couple goats, rabbits, and lived on a little tiny farm. Though I don't have a lot of memories of my growing up years, one of my favorite memories was helping him pick the produce in the garden! It may be because my chores didn't involve taking out the trash or sweeping the floors, but I absolutely LOVED chores. They were feeding the animals and learning to work with the land (very part-time as I jumped back and forth between households.) One thing that I always knew that I wanted from helping out around the farm house was that I wanted to do the same thing myself some day! I don't have any desire to have cows, goats, or rabbits again, but I would LOVE a tiny piece of land with plenty of space that I can have my own little garden and chickens. Small house, and just enough land is my idea of a dream :). In the future I want to raise kids who LOVE being outside, learning to work with the earth, and enjoy being grounded in nature. What better and more rewarding way than with a produce garden?
SO - like I said. This is my very first time ever planting a garden of my OWN without anyone telling me what to do. We rent our home that has a large lot, but is very deep and narrow. We are also surrounded by trees and the whole back half of the lot is wooded over. This left few options for where to put our garden, but thankfully the place where it will receive about 6 hours of direct sunshine per day is exactly where I would have chosen to put it anyways!
Since we rent and I don't know much about knowing whether our soil is good or not, I decided the easiest thing to do would be to have a raised-bed garden. I researched many different types of gardens and fell in LOVE with literally all of them. Container gardens, raised gardens made out of wood, tiny little "high-rise" gardens that you can put on a porch and are decked out with built in irrigation systems, etc. And as tempting as all of these fancy things were, I kept thinking about how simple gardening SHOULD be because it is something that has been around literally forever. Therefore, I do not need any of these fancy kits or decked out gear to get going, all I need is some good soil, a little space, and of course my plants :)
I wanted a tiny 4x4 that would give me 16 sq ft of planting space, which has PLENTY of room to feed two people. I decided to build a cinder block garden and ended up using 6x8x15 inch cinder blocks, stacked two high, which would give us a little over 4x4. I'm sure if you wanted it to be bigger you could easily make it so, but I wanted ours to be small enough that I wouldn't need to walk through anything to get to the middle of it! I also love the gardens like this that have numerous 4x4s (this would be futuristic though for us, as one is plenty at this point :) )
See - my future:
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| Image from The Modern Gardener |
Anyways...
To build our garden we purchased...
32 - 6x8x16 cinder blocks at 98 cents a piece
7 - 40 lb bags of organic raised bed soil at about $7.50 per bag
We also laid down cardboard and stacked the blocks on top of the cardboard to help keep the weeds out! I'm not sure if this will actually work or not (remember it's my first time :) ) but I read that this was an easy (and free) way to do it instead of buying that black mesh stuff to put on the bottom. Also the cardboard will disintegrate eventually!
10 - plant starts! I chose to use starts instead of seeds because for many types of seeds you have to start them indoors weeks in advance, and since I didn't, this is the route I chose to go. I also learned that the first day or two in a transplant of a plant from container to garden bed are crucial and you'll quickly find out if it was successful or not. I'm on day three and all of mine look healthy so as long as you're careful and tuck them all nicely in to bed you shouldn't have any problems. :)
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| The muscles behind the operation :) AKA my husband |
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| I'd like to take a second to recognize how incredible it is that our tiny little hybrid (Honda Insight) was able to hold 28 cinder blocks, 7 bags of mulch, and all of our plants...(we had to go back to buy 4 more cinder blocks because of a miscalculation - rookie move.) |
I spent a lot of time selecting my plants and figuring out how much space I needed between everything to make sure certain things don't kill other things (or take over the world as I've heard cucumbers do...) It was very overwhelming, I'm not going to lie. But I kept reminding myself that it is my first time on my own, so I'm being cautiously optimistic about how it will turn out. We have had three successful years of marriage without a garden, so if I get one dinner out of it this year I will be happy!
We chose:
-Green Beans
-Sweet Corn
-(1) Cucumber
-(2) tomato plants (cherry and heirloom)
-sweet onions
-sweet red peppers
We also are going to grow strawberries in a container (the plants on the side without a home) and put mint in a separate area (also pictured.)
The nice thing about this garden being so small and above ground is that I can very easily cover it with a tarp when the weather isn't cooperating. For example, this morning it has been POURING for the past few hours, and since I don't know how well the drainage for this is yet I left it open for awhile and then after consulting with my father-in-law (who has an epic garden of his own), I decided to cover it with a tarp. I will also do this on nights when there is a chance of frost.
It was SO much fun building this with my husband, planting it, and spending time outside together. There is something about this weather that makes everything about life better. :) It is amazing how much my mood improves when the weather is nice!
So there it is! Our garden plan. I'm sure it is seeping with rookie mistakes - but that is to be expected! I am anxious to learn and grow as a gardener for many years to come!
Next step...chickens?
