Veggie Garden!

The moment we've all been waiting for- the planting of the vegetable garden! ....well at least it's the moment I've been waiting for. We planted it last weekend, March 10th, and yes I'm super late putting up this post. It might have been a little early to be planting, but we went ahead and did it for a couple of reasons-
1. Based on when we started the seedlings indoors, things were starting to die and/or get too tall
2. We have so much going on over the next few weeks, it was now or late April
3. I really wanted to get it going :)

It took absolutely the entire weekend (plus another weekend early in January when we cleared out a lot of pine straw and ivy) & it was absolutely exhausting. But the difference is amazing!

Before- dirt, pine-straw, ivy, and chain-length fence

After- 3 Vegetable Garden Beds!

Bed 1- Onions

We planted what was left of our seedlings {some Cherokee Tomatoes, Roma Tomatoes, Bell Pepper and Poblano}. Due to a series of unfortunate encounters with Nutmeg, the Zucchini seedlings didn't make it.... We also bought a few small plants to supplement the seedlings- (1)Better Boy Tomato, (1) Roma Tomato, (4) Cucumber, (1) Eggplant, and several varieties of lettuce. We got the lettuce varieties from the Oakhurst Garden down the road, it's a community garden, which is pretty awesome! They have all kinds of planting classes that we want to check out soon!

Bed 1- Tomatoes

Bed 1 - Cucumber, Bell Pepper & Poblano

Bed 2 - Seeds, Kale, Butter Lettuce, and Arugula

 In the second bed we planted some cherry tomato seeds, broccoli seeds, and some leafy veggies we got at the Oakhurst community garden {kale, butter lettuce, and arugula}. The 2 spikes indicated the rows for the seedlings, tomatoes to the left and broccoli to the right. Since I took forever to post this, I saw last night that we have some broccoli seedlings popping up already :)








In our "Fruit" bed, we planted (2) Blueberry, (2) Blackberry, and (1) Nectarine tree that we got back in January at the Atlanta Fruit Tree sale (that wasn't what it was called, but I can't remember). Basically, it was a fundraiser where you could buy fruit trees and the proceeds went to the Atlanta Food Bank. It turned out to be pretty ridiculous, even though there were torrential downpours that day.... Seriously, the roads were flooding on our way there. Anyways, in addition to that, we planted some Watermelon and Cantaloupe seeds that we are hoping to trellis up the fence. We saw a cool post once about trellising them and using "pantyhose supports" to cradle them, so we'll see how that works out.


Basically, we're treating this year as an experiment, see what grows, what doesn't. And then we can make a better plan for next year. And since torrential downpours seem to follow us on our gardening adventures, what happens 2 days after we plant everything?! None other than, torrential downpours! Overall, it looks like the damage was minimal, we loosely staked the seedlings since they got knocked down into the dirt, and re-covered a few roots of the lettuce-y varieties. A basil plant was the only noticeable causality so far. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we planted other stuff in window box planters and hanging planters around the deck. Oh well, everything else will just have to wait for another post :)

Psst! Check out how big everything has grown in a month here!