Early in September at the beginning of Spring I decided I wanted to try growing our own vegetables in a raised garden bed. I spent hours doing research into the different types of garden beds, what soil we'd need and what vegetables would grow best during the spring and up coming summer months.
So it's been nearly a month since Mr Opoes and I put the garden beds together, building them took us a couple of hours and then finding a spot for them took us even longer. By the time we'd finished we'd run out of time to get to the hardware store to buy all the soil and sugar cane mulch. So early the following day we rushed off to our local hardware store to purchase one bag of sugar cane mulch, seven bags of soil, one bag of manure and two bags of tomato and vegetable food. This was only half of the stuff we needed but as Mr Opoes had an event to get too we didn't have time to purchase it all. So our little gardening project had to be delayed another week.
As a few weeks had past since we'd put the garden beds together I made it my mission to get stuck in to having both garden beds planted out by the following weekend. Another trip to the hardware store was made, supplies were purchased, loaded into the car and bought home to be unloaded into the backyard. We were able to get both garden bed filled with soil and I then went about planting out one of the beds with my packet seeds and my tomato plant. I quickly came to the realisation that my little tomato plant would need some kind of support in order to grow better so I rushed back to buy a trellis from the hardware store.
The long story short is that my first garden bed had been planted out for three weeks and I was still to plant out the second on. I really wanted my second garden bed to look like the other bed which had germinated really well even though I wasn't looking after it as well as I should have. So on Saturday I went off to another hardware store and purchased a plastic pot, strawberry plant, carrot seedlings, celery seedlings and a capsicum plant. When I got home I realised that my plastic pot didn't have any drainage holes in it so I set about drilling four holes in the bottom so that the water can drain into the saucer that I also picked up. I got to work planting my strawberry in the pot because I'd seen on Better Homes and Gardens that you can plant them in pots.
So I am now proud to say that we have both garden bed planted out and all the vegetables are doing OK. With the hot temperatures we've been experiencing lately I'm going to have water the vegetables regularly so that they don't die. I wish that I'd taken the time and the correct steps the first time to get organised so that my veggie garden was done in a weekend, the best thing that's come from the whole experience would be I've had time to gain some more knowledge and understanding about every process involved.
The kids are super excited about our garden so I'm going to watch them when they're outside just to make sure I don't have things picked from the veggie patch. I'm also looking forward to continuing this next year and I'm hoping that Quinlan and I will be able to work on it together when it's just the two of us at home. So tell what are you growing in your veggie patch this season?
Megan
