Looking Back...Our First Garden: Summer 2011

Last year we began our journey toward a more sustainable lifestyle by planting a garden. 

Growing our own food is something we had been excited about for a while and we really wanted to see what we could grow on our own. Luckily we had a good sized backyard, lots of sunlight, and a very understanding landlord.

To get ourselves started, we decided on what plants to grow and then went about sketching our ideas.

Our plans looked like this and were hand drawn by Tom:

In the main garden bed we planned to grow: "The three sisters" (Sweet Corn, Squash and Pole Beans),
Cucumbers, Tomatoes and Basil, Bell Peppers, Hot Peppers (several varieties), Snap Peas, and our experimental Peanuts (we weren't sure if they would have a long enough growing season in New England, but we thought we would throw them in the mix for fun and see what happened!).

In our raised beds we planned to grow:

Left: Broccoli & Spinach

Right: Salad Greens, Onions & Carrots

*** We also planned to plant herbs in a neat spiral formation that we found in one of our gardening books. More on that next :)

With lots of ideas in our heads and our plans sketched out, it was time to get outside and start digging.

Here are some photos of our process. 

1. Plot and dig out the main garden bed.

2. Add a few truckloads of fresh compost and mix in with existing soil. 

(For this part we were lucky to live in a town that offers access to their compost pile and 

allows you to take as much as you can carry truck out!)

3. Build the raised beds.

4. Build a circular bed with rocks and boulders found during the digging of the

main garden bed and use them to create a home for all our herbs, an idea that we got from this book.

  

Once everything was dug out and filled in again, we were ready to begin the planting. Some plants we had chosen to start from seed in our house and others we purchased as starters at our local garden center. Here are a few shots of our seeds ready to be transplanted outside.

For our "herb spiral" we purchased starter plants. Here they are all tucked in to their new home. From the top of the spiral we planted rosemary, sage, tarragon, dill, parsley, basil, cilantro, chamomile, silver thyme, golden oregano, lemon balm, chives, and garlic. In between the herbs are 4 strawberry plants that we thought would be a fun addition to the herbs. Unfortunately our little rabbit friends love strawberries just as much as we do and ate them right up before we could get to them! 

Here are the two raised beds. On the left are our carrots, onion sets, and lettuce. On the right are our broccoli starters. You can see a little bit of the netting we ended up putting over the two raised beds to deter the birds from eating our crop!

And here's the main bed (a little later in the season on a nice sunny day :)

By the end of the summer, this bed grew in A LOT! That's me kneeling in the middle with our puppy, Napali. He also really liked hanging out in the garden while we worked :)