If you’ve been around for any length of time, you know that I used to have a pretty giant garden at our house. When we first moved into the barn (before building our house), we cleared an area about 20×75 feet. That’s even larger than the area our house sits on.
It was huge.
I would love to tell you that I was a gardening goddess, but that would be a lie. (A big, fat honking lie.) I was so terrible at maintaining it. In fact, the only time the garden looked remotely presentable was when I took this photo. Otherwise, it looked more like this.
Bless my sweet little heart.
I am a person who loves the IDEA of a project – the planning and the dreaming and even the initial doing. But I fail terribly at FOLLOW-THROUGH. After the plan is executed, I’m onto the next project. (This is not new – my ideas have always been bigger than my follow through.)
When it came to vegetable gardening, there were some specific reasons that our past setup didn’t work for me:
- Location: The garden space was on the opposite side of the barn. That meant that it was truly “out of sight and out of mind.” I’d almost forget it was there so I’d never follow through on watering, weeding and even harvesting. Generally, I think you need to water, weed and harvest a garden to make it successful. It was also hard to be over there when my kids were out-of-sight. I wanted to bring the garden much closer to the house where we already spent a lot of time outdoors.
- Size: It was just too big. I needed a smaller, more manageable space to grow.
- Weeds: We worked the soil in our garden for several years and it did get a lot better, but the weeds just always got out of control and I couldn’t keep up. We had better luck when we mulched the area, but I knew I wanted to find a better way to conquer weeds, if possible.
So I gave it up for several years and had a few babies instead. By the beginning of this year, I knew I wanted to start a small garden. I missed having fresh veggies and herbs and I knew we could make some changes to help my vision align with my ability to follow through. The plan – a raised bed garden right next to the house.
A raised bed would be a smaller area to maintain, with less weeds (thanks to the soil added over weed barrier), in a much more visible and convenient location for maintaining and harvesting. When COVID hit in early March, we had already planned to start a small garden and it felt even more important to follow through – both to give us a project and for the ability to grow some of our own food.
We weren’t going to hardware stores, so we agreed to re purpose our DIY cedar compost bins into raised beds right outside our garage. The compost bins were also a wonderful idea that we eventually stopped using. (I blame the fact that giant snakes liked to hang out there. But it was also laziness – they were not close to the house and we never went out there to dump scraps.)
After several years, the cedar color had mellowed out – but the wood was still in excellent shape and would be perfect for the raised beds. (Bonus: it was free.)
We didn’t document *how* we built these because it was a bit of a puzzle to get them put together with the wood we had already. If you are looking for specific plans for a raised bed garden, try this simple raised garden bed from A Modern Homestead. It’s pretty straightforward and you’ll be growing in no time.
Ryan disassembled the pieces and re-built them next to our garage and driveway. It’s a spot where we spend a lot of time with the kids – blowing bubbles and riding bikes and playing with sidewalk chalk. It’s also a great way to block a large incline behind the house from our kids – which is a bonus.
This is how the garden looks more recently. It’s a 12×3 foot space and was filled with soil and compost mostly pulled from our compost bins and garden. (We also got a few bags of topsoil for the top.) I used twine to space out each square foot and followed the square foot garden method for how many plants to grow in each square.
We got our seeds from Seed Savers Exchange and Onion Grove Mercantile. We managed to start almost everything from seed in our kitchen window with no grow lights. It was a fun project for our kids, too. Since we were home for months, I’m calling that distance learning.
We got a bit of late start – we didn’t start any seeds until early April. But since we are a zone 5, we ended up with plenty of time to nurture the plants before putting them outside after Mother’s Day. I also started some seeds directly in the garden in early May. Even the tomatoes and peppers were big enough to put in the ground in mid-to-late May. And then they TOOK OFF. I don’t think I’ve ever had such healthy, tall tomato plants.
This is about halfway through our growing season, but we have already enjoyed oodles of great garden produce and have lots more on the way.
We grew:
- Carrots (3 varieties) *
- Radishes (3 varieties) *
- Lettuce (mixed leaf) *
- Spinach *
- Swiss chard *
- Mustard greens *
- Sugar snap peas *
- Cilantro *
- Cucumbers *
- Peppers (sweet and jalapeno)
- Tomatoes (6 varieties)
- Eggplant
- Mint
- Chives
- Dill *
- Basil
- Zucchini *
- Butternut squash *
(* direct seed)
Overall, we’ve had a lot of success in a small footprint. It’s a pretty packed garden, but most everything seems to be thriving and weeds have been minimal.
Our only duds were carrots (they never grew very big, but we still picked and ate them), snap peas (we only got a few before it got too hot), and spinach (something ate it all before we got a single leaf).
But we had some insane success with lettuce, swiss chard, cilantro, and radishes – we ate so much and plan to re-plant all of these in the late summer for a fall crop.
Now, we are on the cusp of drowning in zucchini, tomatoes and cucumbers, which gives me great joy. I’m basically eating cucumbers for every single meal, which is exactly what God intended.
I pulled out all the early crops already and let the butternut squash take over almost half of the bed for now. I just love butternut squash and it’s worth all the space. Plus, it keeps for a long time so it won’t go to waste.
The zucchini is spilling over the back of the garden bed, which makes the most of the space.
We’ve already picked 8-10 zucchini and there are a lot more on the way.
As for maintaining the garden, I’ve begun to get into a routine of watering, (minimal) weeding and harvesting in the evening when my little kids go to bed. It’s usually cooler and the area gets a bit of afternoon/evening shade so the plants don’t get totally scorched.
It’s become a nice little wind-down time, enjoying the garden instead of feeling stressed and frustrated by the maintenance and then giving up completely. I’ve found a great deal of joy in seeing this little garden thrive.
It’s also right outside my back door/garage, which means we enjoy it more. When I need something, I can just run outside. When we play on the driveaway, we can check out the progress. Every time I pull in or out of the garage, I can see how the garden is growing and changing.
My kids (especially Lucy) love to help me find veggies to pick when we are outside. And she’s eaten pretty much every ripe cherry tomato off the vine.
Who can blame her? If it wasn’t her, it’d be me.
Are you gardening this year?
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Michelle says
Your area looks beautiful! After reading this post I’m re-thinking the location of our permanent garden area. I like the idea of keeping the raised beds close to the house so you see them all the time and it makes it so much more accessible. We built our own raised beds and are loving them!
Kristin says
OH MY GOSH!! Your posts don’t show up in my Instagram feed, plus I’m terrible at looking at Instagram, so I had no idea you’d had a third kiddo!! When you said “had a few babies instead” I was like, wait, two is a couple, not a few… And went over to Instastalk you. I am so freaking (belatedly) happy and excited for you guys!!! Lol Also, your garden looks awesome. 😁
Colleen says
Love your garden and the proximity to the house is perfect. Well done!
Stephanie Gregoles says
It looks awesome!! We did the same thing this year, although our large garden was much smaller than yours. A raised smaller garden is so much easier to maintain! Plus we turned the old garden into a fire pit/seating area with some landscaping timbers, string lights, planters and inexpensive chairs. It’s so much prettier and more useful than a massive garden I didn’t end up having time for!
daisy says
Sounds like a great solution.
We installed drip irrigation this year and it made such a difference. No need to worry about watering, just set a timer and let it go! I’d highly recommend it.
Enjoy your bounty! So good to see a post from you today. ;0D
Susan says
We have a 3 foot high raised bed that butts up to foundation/carport wall on the west side of our house, which was built on hilly terrain. The best part – our resident deer family won’t come that close to the house, rabbits can’t jump up that high and the water faucet is within 2 feet, so watering is a breeze. However, I wish the bed could have been longer but several tall trees are in the way, and those same trees effectively block the garden from the brutal west sun. Regardless, this year we’ve harvested bush beans, basil, onions and cherry tomatoes. The carrots were a bust and the snow peas and spinach were history by early May. For color I planted nasturtiums around the edges and they bloomed like crazy thru July 4th before succumbing to Texas heat. I love my raised bed and utilize square foot gardening as well. Yours looks GREAT!