New Growth

So, I had tried to grow a small vegetable garden back in our Nebraska base housing days.  I was so excited when the stems of green beans and zucchini seeds sprouted out of the ground, and day by day, their little leaves grew bigger.  I watered them perfectly and checked on them and marveled at their creation from just a tiny seed, multiple times a day.  It was when I had just one baby of my own and I was so excited to be the "mommy" of these new plants. 

In less than a week, they had all been eaten by rabbits, reduced to short green stems.  I was pretty distraught over it and decided that gardening was not for me.

Since then, I got over my hopelessness in my gardening abilities.  I've bought small pots here and there with some variety of vegetable or herb growing in them.  They didn't grow well in the house and so, each time, I'd set them somewhere in the backyard, and each time, no matter how high of a platform I found to put them on...a table, the grill, the A/C unit, our dog attacked them and their lives ended.  Darn dog and his agression towards potted plants.

That hope never went away completley though.  For some reason, a desire to grow my own vegetables is just somewhere inside of me.  I've always preferred to buy produce at farmers' markets to get it fresh and natural, but having to make that extra stop to shop, and now not even being able to find a good one near our new home, has made it seem easier to just choose from whatever the commissary has in their produce department.

All this to say...I've started a new garden.  And it's good this time.

After researching gardening websites and blogs, as well as my Vegetable Gardening for Dummies book, I decided that a raised garden bed was what I wanted.  We have a huge yard but most of the backyard is very sandy soil.  Not having to dig that out of the way would be easier, so we just put our raised bed garden right on top of it.

We found a simple way to build them on some website (sorry I can't direct you there), and Chris set out to build it.

All he used was: 3 8-foot long 2x6s (one cut in half and used on the two ends), 3 8-foot long 2x4s (as a railing around the top edges), and a 4-foot length of 2x4 cut into 12 inch lengths.  We dug up the grass and weeds in it, put down a weed barrier on the bottom and then filled it with a truckload of soil and mixed bags of compost into it.

I had started some seeds in some peat pellets I found on clearance but none of them grew, not even the beans, which usually grow pretty easy.  So I planted all of the peat pellets in the garden and they still did not grow.  It was getting pretty late into the late summer growing season here, so I dug them all up and planted new seeds as well as some plants that were already starting to grow. 

I forgot to take pictures of the garden right after I planted everything, but this is what is looked like three days ago, about two weeks later...

Starting in the back is a tomato plant (transplanted) and beans plants (grown from seeds). 

In front of those I've planted onion seeds which are just starting to come up so you can't see them well.

The big ones are broccoli, which I bought as tiny little plants and I love how big they've gotten under my care!

I planted romaine lettuce in front of those but I can't tell if it's sprouted yet. 

There is a row of carrots in there that you also can't see in the picture.

And the little plants in that front row are radishes.  I'm not a big radish fan, but I read that they are the easiest thing to grow and I wanted something that I could pick and eat!

I've been weeding the garden but I'm not sure sometimes what is a weed or not, so sometimes they get to stay for a while.

Some close up pictures...

my tomato plant with some flower buds means that fruit is to come in a couple weeks! you can alse see the bean plants in the back.

close-up of bean plants

my huge broccoli plants!  the little one in the front wasn't too happy about being transplanted but is making a comeback.  fyi, that's the size the others ones were when they started out in my garden!

radishes.

This was today after some nice rain yesterday.  Something has been chomping on my radish plants and a critter fence is in the works.  But now I can see my carrots and onions sprouting! (Not really visable in the photo)

And my super hubby made another raised bed this past weekend!

When we were reading about the carrots, it said to plant them after you've let the compost enrich the soil for a few months (or something like that).  So we're going to let that one sit until the spring and start some yummy spring vegetables then. 

And as you can see, we have a lot more space if we want to add more raised garden beds. 

I'm really excited to be able to pick our first harvest and I'll be sure to add pictures of the moment!