This last fall I started a series all about my Adventures in Gardening. I’m not a gardening expert but wanting so badly to have some success so last fall, I made a box garden, filled it with soil, and dreamed of warm spring air to begin my garden. Here is a picture of my first box garden all finished up that I made in the fall.
Now it is spring so I decided to go outside and look at my box garden.
This is what I saw.
I am pretty sure I will need to ask the Lord to forgive me for the thoughts and swear words that came to my mind after I saw this. I was like “What in the heck happened here?” Where did all my dirt go? Curse this stinking Tri-Cities wind…it has blown away all my good soil.
This was not a great way for me to start out my spring garden…with me having to go back to the nursery and drop more money into more soil. But I really really do want a garden, so I am going to count this as a lesson learned. Next year I will be tarping my good soil down.
So off I went to buy more of my special garden soil mixture. And spent another couple of hours mixing, pouring and spreading. Actually this time I enlisted the help of my daughter who was super excited to help me.
When we were mixing and spreading the soil it was super windy…we really should have put our hair in pony-tails, because it was rather annoying having our hair in our faces. Oh and yes, my rake is no longer really a rake, and I don’t have any idea of what happened to all the spokes on it. Another mystery that will be left unsolved. I just used it as a spreader instead.
And here is our finished project – all this work and I am back to square 1! Yay! (that was sarcastic by the way…very sarcastic…)
Okay, so now that I have my soil back in the garden I wanted to talk about planting.
The first step is to figure out all the items you are planning on planting. Choose items your family would eat.
Then make a diagram of where you would like to put your items.
I found this great FREE Garden planner website here: Gardeners Supply Company to help me to drag and drop my garden vegetables, flowers and herbs into the square footage of my garden. You can chart your own garden space – its Awesome!
Plus I used Sprout Robot for letting me know when the right season is to plant each of my vegetables. I did not pay for the subscription.
Here is the chart I made up for my own little garden:
So as you can see I plan on having Sweet Peas, Tomatoes, Green Peppers, Zucchini, Onions, Carrots, Lettuce, Herbs and some Marigolds this year in my garden. It was so easy to click and drag different fruits and vegetables around in my own measured space.
Next is to start getting your seeds. You can go down to many grocery or drug stores and find some seeds, or if you are trying to save money you could always use the $25 off coupon from the Gardens Alive Catalog they will mail to you and get some seeds there. There are quite a few online companies as well where you can order seeds online. Just start getting them so you can be ready when it’s time to plant.
Then plant when the season is right. If you are signed up with that website it will send you emails to let you know when to start certain plants indoors or outdoors. So when it’s time just follow the directions on the seed packet.
Sometime this week I am going to plant my Sweet Pea seeds since they need to be planted early. They like cool weather. Stay tuned for my next post in my adventures in gardening.
We attempted a small home garden the last couple years and found out a few pieces of helpful good-to-know things. First, carrots & onions need a lot of depth to the soil they’re planted in, in order to grow to a size that you might be happy with. If your soil is only 1-ft deep then your carrots will be short and stubby and onions will be small. Don’t pick onions too early; they aren’t worth much when they’re tiny. Second, squash and zucchini and pumpkins are “runners”. Their vines grow and grow and grow and then sprout flowers and grow the vegetable. Having a small 2′ x 2′ “spot” probably won’t be sufficient. Third, keep picking green beans and you’ll get three or four “harvests”. Happy Planting!!
I think it is so fun to watch you on this adventure. I remember when I was first starting out gardening and was learning all kinds of lessons. Keep up the great work,you will be enjoying the fruits of your labors in no time.
Be sure not to use treated lumber! The poisons that are used to treat the wood will leach into the soil. The veggies will absorb those poisons…not ve healthy.
are you sure that your soil didnt just settle?
Some of the soil might have settled, but when I dug + raked it I had maybe like 1/4 of my box garden full.
You don’t have to pay for the subscription, it was free. But you do have to register and start your garden in the account. Then you will have the option of making a garden. 🙂
Update: I updated my post above to share the changes to this – I forgot to add a website for the garden planner.
I always plant lots of marigolds around my tomatoes. They help to kill harmful nematodes . 🙂
Oooh, maybe I will re-arrange my garden plan. 🙂 Thanks for the tip. Marigolds near tomatoes…check!
Where is the map options on the site? I can’t find it and it would be so helpful.
I dont know if you have heard of campanion planting, but there is a book out called “carrots love tomatoes” that help you plant stuff that help each other out!
Fred Meyer right now has a coupon this week for BOGO on packets of seeds.
Sweet!
Can’t wait for things to start popping out of the ground! On the garden, one thing I would think about is making sure the peppers are in a place that are not going to get shaded by the bigger plants. They like a lot of sun. We have learned the hard way in the past on our peppers!
Great point Gwen..I will move them to somewhere further away from those tomatoes! Thanks.
I’m registered for this but I don’t see the option to map out your garden. Is this with the upgraded version only? 🙁
i too don’t see the option of creating the layout like you did….??? i joined, chose what i wanted, check my email, but still don’t see the option of the layout. am i missing something?
thanks!
Oh my gosh! Thanks for this new resource, it’s exactly what I needed!
I too have had dreams of a nice little garden so last year we started a compost pile! Throughout the fall and winter we dumped all of our compostable material in there and it supplied enough AMAZING dirt to fill one of our boxes. It was a great science project for the kids too, to watch how things decompose and how the worms help the process. I highly recommend it. 🙂
Hi Brittany, I did research last fall all about making my own compost pile or bin and was totally going to do it. But then never got around to doing it. I am going to have to start one for sure next fall (or sooner if I can..)