My little garden

I've been watching and learning a little about gardening from Erik and Mary Kate over the past few years. I've been a little discouraged because I wanted to have my own garden and chickens and stuff like that but didn't have the yard to do it in. When we first saw our new house I wasn't really thinking much about that. I was just excited by the house and the garage. I quickly realized that I could scratch the itch I had been feeling. It didn't take long to start digging out a spot that looked like it had had a garden sometime in the past. I tilled the soil about 10"-12" deep and mixed in some soil amendments that Erik gave me.

 The area I cleared was roughly 5' x 9' and I took out the first 2-3" of soil/grass

Another view of the same spot

On Tuesday I built the sides. I only had to buy one 10 foot 2" x 10", some screws, and 4 corner reinforcements to build the box. The other three sides and the plywood was already in the garage ready to use. Erik brought over a saw and a screw gun and we made short work of it. We decided to use as much of the existing 2" x 10" as we could and ended up with a 5' x 10' box. I cleared the grass from the extra area and finished tilling the soil to about 10".

On Wednesday, Erik again helped me by hauling 2 loads (1 cu.yd. total) of "4-way" soil mix (topsoil, composted cow manure, composted yard debris, and sand). This filled the bed almost to the top of the sides. I had a little left over for the front of the house and some containers that I will grow some herbs in.

Friday I started planting. So far I've planted 2 rows of onions (white, yellow, and red from bulbs I got from Mary Kate), 2 rows of Imperator carrots (from seed), a row of Olympia spinach (from seed), and a row of mesclun (mix of gourmet greens - from seed). I found a 3 gallon pot and planted chives (from seed) on Sunday. I still plan on planting 1/2 row of radishes, 1/2 row of cilantro, a row of basil (waiting for warmer nights before planting this), and 2 tomato plants (will buy starts in 3 or 4 weeks). I'm probably going to plant a 5 gal. bucket of leeks and one of rosemary also. And maybe potatoes in a 30 gal. plastic garbage can. I'm not sure about that one yet. I think this is plenty for my first garden.

About the only other thing I'm doing is sunflowers in the front of the house. Last Monday I started germinating about 120 seeds that Mary Kate gave me. Saturday I started prepping the soil and trimming back the shrubs. I had to move a lot of fresh bark away from where I wanted to plant. Sunday I finished the prep and put several inches of 4-way soil mix down. I planted about 100 sprouted seeds in front of the house on both sides of the porch. We'll see what happens. Something good I hope.

Planted about 17' on the left of the porch and 10' on the right