Our first garden

Thanks to the home's previous owners, we have 5 raised garden boxes, which made it almost impossible to pass up the whole gardening adventure. In preparation last fall, I either pulled or sprayed everything that already existed to get rid of any weeds and so that we could plant what we wanted to enjoy. We planted in 4 of the boxes and at the last minute I decided to try out my version of square foot gardening in 2 of them. I strung string to form square foot boxes and tried to figure out how many seeds to put in each square. My problem however was that I never planned it out so I started to forget what I had planted where and eventually I was forgetting which squares I had already planted in. Besides the chives and rhubarb that somehow resurrected themselves this year, here's what we added:

Carrots
Lettuce (3 types)
Snow Peas
Broccoli
Green Beans
Red Peppers
Green Pepper
Jalapenos
Red Onions
Green Onions
Yellow Onions
Corn
Cucumbers
Tomatoes
Watermelon
Basil
Oregano
Cilantro
Chard
Yellow Squash
Zucchini

So far we've enjoyed the green beans, peas, lettuce, broccoli, chives, and carrots. The jalapenos, peppers, chard and tomatoes are growing very slow; the cilantro flowered very quickly and I must have planted the herbs too deep because I haven't seen them yet. No sign of the cucumbers or the melon. The onions are just starting to take off and the corn is just about ready to harvest!

The only problem is I used one whole garden box to plant 2 squash, 2 zucchini, and 2 cucumber plants. I way over did it on the squash and zucchini. I swear I am picking out 10 of each a week and there is only so much you can do with them! Well, we won't be planting those next year.

I also learned that adding compost to the soil makes a huge difference. We added it to the corn and melon box and I think our corn is the healthiest, tallest crop in the neighborhood.

I think we will be a little less ambitious next year and plan things out a little better. And it will help now we know how things grow and what we actually enjoy harvesting. It has been fun nonetheless!

Here are some pictures that we took on July 5th: