So this one day I built a garden...

I love food. And growing things. And making things out of the food that I’ve grown. The trouble is, I haven’t lived in a place that allowed for any sort of gardening in over 10 years, so while I’m a pretty decent cook (most dwellings do allow for a certain amount of cooking…) I am a fairly novice gardener. Last year I appropriated a sizable portion of our bike storage lockup area with some large pots, but this year I'm going big.

 This is what I'm graduating up from. 

Teeny tiny, but all mine. 

Equipped with the basic knowledge of how to dead-head marigolds (thanks, Nana!), mixing different types of soils (thanks, Dad!), try to water in the morning, and make sure to plant for the amount of sun available (thanks to spending one summer working for a plant nursery in Michigan), I decided to go for it. Ooh, did I mention that I wanted to do it basically for free? Yeah, this is gonna be fun. 

Thanks to some free scrap lumber (someone crashed into the wooden patios next to our building and they had to be rebuilt, yielding plenty of scraps that would have otherwise made their way to the landfill- don’t worry, nobody was hurt) I built a 4’x6’ box and lined the bottom with extra boards and newspaper to prevent seeping  in of ground chemicals. I did have to spend a little $ on the proper dirt mix and some small plants from Home Depot. Let’s be honest, you can only plant so much from seed (see Adventures in Seedlings). 

My thought in placing the plants and veggies like I did was that I know that Marigolds and certain herbs can naturally deter pests, especially from tomatoes, and that maybe if I planted the hot peppers on the outside of the box the neighborhood bunny wouldn’t be too interested after trying to nibble the first time. Zucchini, cucumbers, and squash have a tendency to spread so I tried to plant them near the edge of the box. We have full sun so the tomatoes go absolutely bonkers, which is why they ended up at the back of the box. And, full disclosure, I planted the flowers and ground cover plants in between the seedlings because I wanted it to look neat and couldn’t wait for all the stuff to start growing. 

This was definitely an experiment. Straight up. I fully anticipate that I will make some major changes next year, depending on how this turns out. (see Garden Progress, aka Weird Decisions)

And now we play the waiting game…