My Vegetable Garden (So Far!)

Last year I had my first garden. I pretty much just stuck some plants in the ground (although I did add a bit to the soil), and it was very haphazard. I didn't even make nice neat rows for everything. It was fun, though, and a good learning experience. I got some crooked neck squash and quite a few tomatoes. This year I have read up some more on vegetable gardening (although I have a ton left to learn) and decided to make raised vegetable beds. We have only gotten one done so far, and will probably just make another one as we have time and energy this summer. This is the back corner of our yard. When my Mom was visiting she and Thomas helped me clear out the area- it was mostly weeds, but also some grass creeping back that way. So, this is what I started with:

In the meantime, I planted some seeds in starter peat squares since it was time to plant. This year I planted cantelope (we just dried these seeds from a cantelope we had!), green peppers, cherry-sized tomatoes, zucchini, yellow squash, green beans and cucumbers. My tomatoes didn't come up for a while, but now have finally come up. We'll see if they end up surviving. I went to my mother-in-law's to pick up the children one day and I mentioned that my green peppers weren't growing, and next thing I knew we were downtown Bethune (SC) picking out some plants. I ended up getting a bunch of pepper plants (including a red and yellow one) and 2 strawberry plants and Nathaniel eyed a watermelon plant, so I said "Why not!" I may have gotten in over my head - we'll see!

We had a bunch of these bricks that lined the lawn area and separated it from the natural (pine trees) areas in our back yard when we moved in. There was something about the backyard that I didn't really like, but couldn't really put my finger on for a while. I finally realized that I felt like our yard was too divided - that there were too many "sections" of the yard. So, I took the bricks off of one side, and I like it much better. I realized the bricks would be great for raised vegetable beds! This way the kids don't walk on the plants or soil, we put in some good soil for the plants, and it looks nicer. This one is 23 feet long!


So today I FINALLY got my plants into the vegetable bed. It is exciting to see it filled with plants and I can't wait to see how my garden does this year!