Our vegetable garden

We only ever had a small vegetable garden in Virginia Beach. We had fun growing our own food there! When we moved to Georgia it was way too hot and with life being busy with 2 small boys it just didn’t happen. In Washington we didn’t grow a garden either. Our backyard was very sloped and shaded. We loved the big trees so we decided not to start a garden there. Here we have a lot of space, boys are older and the itch of growing our own food came back. So we decided we wanted to make a vegetable garden and the flower bed beyond the patio was the perfect spot. It has some shade in one corner but the rest is nice and sunny.

When we moved into our house a lot of the flower beds were overgrown from the house sitting empty. Don’t get me wrong it wasn’t a jungle but they definitely needed cleaning up. The flower bed we had in mind to change into the vegetable garden had roses, monarda, rudbeckia and grass. The grass looks amazing but it’s very invasive. To clear the flower bed we dug up what we wanted to keep and replanted it. We posted an ad for free plants, you dig. A lot of people came and that cleared out a lot of the flower bed. Still a bunch of the dreaded grass left. It took a while to get it all out, but we never gave up and in time we got it cleared. Of course we didn’t like the shape the area had. It was rectangular, but more like a trapezium. With the layout we had in mind we wanted it square. Time to do more digging and cleaning up!

In fall we ended up with a square of roughly 40 by 40 feet. A really nice area where we put cardboard down and then a lot of mulch. Growing season is short in Wisconsin and by the time we had finished the area it was too late to plant anything. So winter came and we waited and waited for the snow and ice to clear so we could pick it back up again. We had made a design during the winter and decided to grow in raised beds. Oh how many options you have for raised beds! Do we go for wood, metal, or build from concrete blocks? After a lot of research we decided to go for metal raised beds in 2 sizes: 4x8 and 4x12 feet and 1 foot tall. In the Wisconsin climate and looking at how much labor concrete blocks are (we are impatient and really wanted to grow something) we think that was our best option.

But what if the growing season was too short or we didn’t have the time we expected to have for it, or didn’t like growing our own food anymore…. So we decided to order the raised beds to put half the garden in. Expanding is always an option and that way the investment isn’t as big at first. Ordering the raised beds is only the first step. The beds need to be filled with soil, compost needs to be added and of course seeds and plants. And watering and plant supports etc. There’s always more things to it than you initially think. So beds were delivered, put together and placed. Do you know how much dirt goes in those beds?! Definitely more than we thought. To limit the amount of dirt and to help with the quality of the soil we put broken up branches, leaves from fall and hay/grass clippings at the bottom. To keep the critters from going in the beds from the bottom we put chicken wire down under it all. Then finally add in the compost and the seeds/plants and the watering and waiting starts.

Before we started planting we did research on what we could combine as plants, what can be planted to naturally help against pests and what needs more sun then other plants. We didn’t have a clue and the further the growing season went and the first harvest came we learned a lot! Garlic: don’t plant in Spring, takes too long and we had no harvest. Zucchini, 5 plants is way too much. We had sooooo much zucchini. Broccoli turned out great, we thought….until we started washing it and they were loaded with tiny caterpillars the same color as the broccoli. We tried washing them off but they kept coming and coming and we just had to toss it. The tomatoes, beans, peppers, onions and potatoes were amazing! Melon, cucumbers and leeks not so much. So many tomatoes and peppers, what to do with them? Well Jaco is amazing at making the best Salsa. Not too spicy, not too chunky, just perfect. He made a lot of jars, but they lasted only a couple of months. Potatoes were great as well, but they were gone too soon. We truly enjoyed our first growing season here.

Here we are today with a great harvest of garlic and potatoes. Green beans, peppers and snow peas have been abundant. Tomatoes are starting to color and pumpkins are growing well. Unfortunately this year the zucchini’s and onions aren’t doing so well. The weather has definitely been different and plants grow differently. It’s okay! We still enjoy growing and tending to the garden. The recent projects we finished are adding a little brick patio and irrigation. The irrigation still needs work, but for now it works. Hopefully next season we can invest in a fence and set up the irrigation a bit better. And maybe in the future a greenhouse can be added?? Keep following along on our social media and blog to see our progress.

And now we are in our 2nd growing season. We enjoyed our first year so much that we decided to put in the other half of the raised beds (luckily the same were still available). This time we had help from my sister and nephew to fill these beds. The yard was too wet to dump the soil close to the garden so we had to haul it all. We have a handy cart that goes behind the lawn mower so we didn't have to pull it all there. After researching what couldn’t be planted in the same spot as last year (tomatoes, and potatoes can’t be put in the same spot every year for example) we planned what goes where. Unfortunately the indoor seeding didn’t go well this Spring. Inconsistent watering made all the seedlings whither and die. The first year was already a struggle. We decided to just buy the plants or direct seed instead. With more space we have planted more green beans, potatoes, snap peas and in October we had planted garlic in the bed that we had potatoes in. After some deer visits in early Spring, who ate a bunch of our green bean plants. A fence is still on our wishlist but very costly and the soil was soggy for so long that putting fence posts in was impossible. Last year we tunneled chicken wire over the plant stands but that didn’t work great with the tomatoes growing through the chicken wire and therefore not being able to lift the chicken wire without breaking the plants. So this year we decided to build cages from scrap wood and chicken wire that can be lifted off the beds and the sides can be opened. They have worked great and have kept the deer from eating our plants.