My First Garden

I've been talking about growing some vegetables of my own for a while now, and had an idea of how I wanted to do it. I got started with research early and was able to set up my first vegetable garden this year. I hope it turns out, cause it was a ton of work!

First, getting the ground ready was the toughie. Luckily, with all the rain the ground was nicely saturated so it was easy to dig and till the ground in the area that I saw had good sun most of the time (obviously not in picture below!).

Then I wanted to have a small garden to start with. I found a 4x8 garden "kit" at Home Depot for less than $100. If I tried to build myself, it would have been a hot mess and well over $100 due to mistakes. This was really easy to build and took me about 15 minutes total!

Not pictured, but still essential to the project, adding soil. RESEARCH, read the reviews, its the best advice I can give. This is still really brand new, so I don't have my review yet, but I chose an organic soil that had rave online reviews.  I put a couple of bags down, watered, raked, then put another bag down, watered and raked. I kept doing this until I thought there would be plenty for the plants to root in. I added around 8 inches high, with my 32 sq ft boxes. I used about 7 bags.

Now to the good stuff!  I got my starters from a local greenhouse and they all had convenient detailed instructions on how far apart and how deep to plant them. I just followed the instructions as best I could, so help a girl out and cross your fingers and hope I did it right!

These are my pots with the herbs we use most!

Cilantro

Mint

 Basil

And here are the garden choices. I went for 'relatively easy' to start with for my first time, so it might look way simple, but you gotta start somewhere, right!?

Lettuce

 Cucumbers

 Summer squash

 More summer squash

 Bell peppers

 Tomatoes

 Cherry tomatoes

 More lettuce! I heart salads, and I think I will feel a huge sense of accomplishment if I get to eat a salad that I personally grew! I also have some jalapeños that I didn't take pics of (it would have been a picture of soil, so sorry!)

 All together now:

Checking out the goods.

That's it for now, a cage for keeping the critters out is built and I owe that to my sweet Joey and his best friend Scott. They know how to keep a gal happy!

If you have a garden, what do you have growing?