To lose my mind, and find my…. Something? Lol
For years I’ve toyed with the idea of “suburban farming” – growing my own produce in raised beds of some sort. I love spending time working with the decorative plants around my yard but just never got around to the whole vegetable/fruit part of the equation. There has always been some other pressing home improvement project that bumps the raised bed gardening down lower on the list and we just never really gave the idea much traction.
This spring I began mentioning it to the hubs again, and for some reason this time the idea took hold in his head (maybe it’s his growing love for a nice ripe tomato slice on his hamburgers? 🤣) This past weekend he built me a little prototype raised bed to see how I liked it based on some designs I sent him that I liked and a few other random ideas that popped into my head for maximizing the not-huge space we could allot to it.
We decided to level them out and step them down the fence line here to allow for easier netting should we need to keep the critters out. First things first, however, was fixing the mud pit that over half our backyard had become (it’s always something, isn’t it?)
We were supposed to be off work today to help with a fish survey in the neighborhood lakes, but due to circumstances beyond control those plans got scrapped and we decided to go ahead and get this huge project finished off. Two and a quarter pallets of St. Augustine sod, 28 thirty pound bags of beach “pebbles” (they’re ROCKS people, calling them pebbles doesn’t make them lighter), and a crapload of sweating, swearing, and me having to crawl under the trampoline several times later, we have a completed backyard project. It’s funny, I knew the muddy mess in the shaded areas under our huge bald cypress trees looked bad, but I didn’t realize exactly how bad until we got the sod and the dry creek bed done and it looked freaking amazing!!!
So I got to work hand-watering all that sod, and hubs set to work installing the bed and making sure it was completely level by digging out the ground underneath. When he got it level we placed some cut branches in the bottom to help with drainage (and also to cut down a little on the amount of soil we’d need to fill it) and filled it with good quality gardening soil. First one is in!!!
We did some calculating and planning and decided on a total of 6 boxes for this first phase, 5 of which will be stepped down this fence line, and the other will be placed beside the kids’ playhouse cottage as the “Children’s Garden”. Of course I couldn’t wait to put some plants in this so I went out and bought way more than would fit and we probably can’t get the other five boxes made for 2+ weeks 🤦♀️🤷♀️🤣.
This box got three red beefsteak tomato plants with supports and I read on Pinterest that basil makes a good companion plant to tomatoes so I planted two of those in the front of the planter. Waiting on the sidelines now are one more tomato plant, four big Bertha green bell pepper plants, and two good-sized strawberry plants. Hopefully they’ll make it until we can get the additional boxes made, though I may put the other tomato plant in a large pot with a support and see how it does there. Why not experiment, AmIRight? 🤷♀️🤣
And of course, I had to go back and get a second sweet basil, because there MUST by symmetry or my brain will start screaming, so here I am at 10pm at night putting another plant in… 🤣🤦♀️😜
I hope to catalog my “journey” here along with trials, successes, and failures to share with others who may be interested in growing some of their own produce in a smaller, more confined place. More power to the suburban farmer!! ❤️❤️❤️ Updates coming soon (and hopefully more frequently than I’ve been posting in the past 🤷♀️🤣)
Happy Gardening!!!!