If you’re new here, welcome! My name is Katie and my husband and I purchased our 1st home last year. I have dreams of having an amazing garden and being able to provide fresh vegetables and fruits for our family. I started my homesteading journey by picking up a Vego 3.5’x5′ metal raised garden bed that can be purchased here. Keep an eye out as they usually go on a lightning sale for $144! This bed is 17″ tall and a good height for me to not have to be on my hands and feet planting.
It took me awhile to figure out where I wanted to setup the raised garden bed. I had to check daily to see where the sun was rising and setting and see if the pine tree would block the bed from the sun. I ended up picking this spot as it had the most sun throughout the day. Plus it was out of the way of the shop so that we could still move cars in and out without hitting the raised bed.
Once I got the bed situated, we went to Walmart and picked up a roll of hardware cloth. I wanted to put this down before adding stuff to the bed so that rodents wouldn’t come up through the bottom and eat my plants. Once that was installed, we moved forward with filling the bed with cardboard, soaking that, and then adding yard waste aka pine needles, sticks and leaves. We’re going off the Hugelkultur method which includes using cardboard, sticks, leaves, basically any yard waste you have and filling the bed almost to the top. Then once it’s settled, adding compost and top soil to fill the rest of the bed. This way you’re not having to fill the entire bed with compost/soil and you’re using up any yard waste you have sitting around. For us especially, we have a LOT of pine needles and leaves. I think we have around 10 pine trees in our front and back yard. So we are never short on pine cones, needles and leaves here.
But wait! There’s more! I tend to get a bit carried away when it comes to new hobbies and dreams. So when I saw that Amazon was having another lightning deal on the Vego garden beds, I couldn’t resist and purchased another. They’re super easy to put together! So if you’re wondering if you should get one or not, do it! Not only do they look super high quality, but it ended up being cheaper than making them out of wood from Lowe’s. That’s a double win, in my opinion!
We ended up repeating the same process for the second bed. With help from my lovely in laws, both beds were finished with 50/50 compost soil and the beds were ready for plants.
If you didn’t already see the plants behind the raised beds, we planted three blueberry bushes. We picked up two powder blue and one tiff blueberry bushes. I love baking with blueberries and haven’t wanted to have blueberry bushes for years now. We just had to make sure we positioned the raised beds about 4 feet away from the blueberries to give them space to grow bushy.
Next we’ll move onto planting. But before I get into that, I had started some vegetables by seed. It was more or less so I could see if I could get something to grow. I wanted to test my green thumb and see how well I could do. I ended up planting around 18 Jalapeno’s, Bell peppers and Anaheims. Ambitious, I know. I ended up starting carrots from seed but those ended up dying as I didn’t know beforehand that they really need to be direct sewn. Ooops! I also started some cilantro, green onions and zinnias from seed. The zinnia’s took off quick!
I’m excited to see so many seeds taking off and thriving. I have had to teach myself about watering and when to water and to not over water. But it’s a journey right!
We ended up not planting any of the seeds I have started as the seedlings are not big enough yet for me to transplant (in my opinion) and it’s more or less an experiment to see if I can get them to be bigger and not kill over. If I end up with 33 pepper plants, so be it. The cool thing about it is, if I end up with too many, I can just sell or give them away. This year will be all about learning. Learning to grow from seed, learning to keep things alive, learning when to water and how much, learning to prune and transplant. I know I’ll end up with more failures this year but it’s all a learning curve and I’m excited either way.
Over the weekend, Steven and I headed to my new favorite nursery, Big Bloomers here in Sanford. Their nursery is absolutely stunning. They have flowers, fruits, veggies, herbs etc. Their pricing is fair and they have a wonderful selection of plants. We purchased our three blueberry bushes from there and went back to get our vegetables and flowers for the raised beds. I know what you’re thinking, “Katie, you have all of these seedlings, why not plant those in the raised beds?”. That’s a great question. The seedlings are my test subjects and I wanted to go with already established starters for the raised bed. If I end up having some seedlings survive my trial period, then I’ll plant some in extra pots I have but for now, I wanted to have starters planted in the raised beds to kind of jump start my gardening season.
I did both raised beds kind of the same because we ended up buying too many plants at the nursery. It was only $57 worth of plants but going off of the advice I received from Epic Gardening, there was no way I was going to be able to fit all of the pepper plants and tomatoes in both beds.
Here’s was we got from the nursery:
- Mini cherry tomatoes
- Regular tomatoes
- Hot Anaheims
- Hot Banana peppers
- Marigolds
- Zinnias
- Sweet Alyssum
- Dahlias
- Cosmos
- Green Basil
- Purple Basil
I ended up planting the flowers along the perimeter in the first bed and repeating it for the second bed. For the second bed I also included two marigolds toward the center of the bed. I may have been a bit ambitious with the layout, but I’m hoping I gave everything enough room to grow fully. I had originally planned to plant two rows of 5 peppers and do the other bed with two rows of tomatoes but quickly realized that everything would be way over crowded once it got bigger.
Want to know something funny? The raised garden beds went back on sale after finishing up these two. So what’s a girl to do but buy another bed. And that’s just what I did. It arrived last night and I need to get it built before the weekend as it’s supposed to rain and I’d like to get the hardware cloth and cardboard laid prior to the rain coming in. Plus I’m tired of seeing piles of pine needles and sticks in the yard, so the yard waste has got to go!
Are you interested in starting a homestead and gardening? Be sure to follow my blog because I plan to take y’all on a journey through my process. Plus you’ll get to see how I am transforming our property over the new few years.
Till next time!
-Katie
The Ramblings of Kaytee 