Starting A Garden!

Starting a garden is so much easier than you might think, it just takes a little work and getting the supplies! I went back and found an old post of when I planted my very first garden, it was so fun looking back at it! With my first garden, a friend of mine had said to just dig up the grass and plant into the ground. I’m here to tell you that there is a much easier way haha…

The first thing I did for our most recent garden, was to order some metal raised garden beds off of Wayfair. Here is the link to the one I chose! Jacob built little wooden ones at our last two houses, but since this one is in a location where neighbors and people could see it, I thought it would be nice for it to match our siding. Jacob kindly assembled them for me once they came in. 😉

After we assembled the box gardens, it was time to go shopping! I did a pick up order for garden/vegetable soil from Lowe’s, (which I highly recommend because they will grab it and load it in your car for you!), and then I went into the garden center to pick out our little veggie babies! I love the idea of having a salsa garden, so I go for roma tomatoes, jalapenos and cilantro for that, and then also grab some other herbs, squash and zucchini. Also went wild and sprung for an eggplant this year hehe.

Here they are, ready to go home! I also grabbed a couple of tomato towers! It’s always good to have those for plants that grow up and have hanging fruit, that way they will be supported as they get taller. I always opt for plants rather than seeds if possible, you can of have a head start this way. Lowe’s is so good to run sales during the spring time too on their vegetable plants.

It was sooo nice not to have to load all of this into the car haha…

Before you add your soil, you need some kind of barrier to keep the weeds out. You could also use cardboard, we have done this before with broken down boxes. Jacob had some of this leftover from a project at our last house, and there was just enough to cover the space for these two new beds!

My little helpers were ready to go! They LOVE helping with the garden, it is such a fun thing for kids to do, and it is so fun to watch the plants grow and produce veggies!

This is a more accurate representation of the way they are most of the time haha…

Then it’s time to start pouring in the dirt! Each of the boys had a little garden tool to help spread it out more evenly. For each box, we needed ten bags of the soil we picked out. So yes, I had to return to Lowe’s for more hehe. 🙂

Next, it was time to plan out where we wanted each of the plants. Some things to keep in mind…if you are planting something like squash or zucchini that grow out wide, you want more space between those plants. If you are planting jalapeños, just keep in mind that some things planted nearby could be effected. Personally, I don’t want spicy bell peppers haha!

Then, you can dig a little hole for where the plant should go and turn it over in your hand to take the cup off. (You can see Jackson doing this here!) You might need to massage the plant soil a little if it is super packed tight, and then you can plop it down into the hole, and cover it with garden soil. Easy peasy!

They each help put plants into the garden!

And we’re done! One box down, one to go! I am planning on adding a third one on the end, need to get on that hehe!

You can see here that we opted to put our tomatoes in the back, so they could grow up tall into the towers. We also added a little fencing around the top and some coffee grounds on the soil to deter our bunny friends. I may also add some chicken wire, but haven’t done that quite yet since the rabbits haven’t seemed to be bothering the plants…yet. I have some space in the middle too that I could add another couple of plants.

The boys like sticking the little tag labels in the ground too so they can see which plant is which.

So that’s it! It was a fun way to spend our Saturday morning together! We water it each day, unless it rains, and keep our eye on it for fungus (vinegar and water mixture is good for this!), bugs or unwanted visitors! It’s amazing how quickly it grows! Hope you enjoyed watching our process and feel more like this is something you could do too!