It has been many years since I have had a vegetable garden. Mostly that has been due to a lack of time, and the busy summer traveling schedule I always had when my eldest two were playing competitive sports. For years, every weekend we were off to a tournament in another city.My husband and I moved into our new home two and a half years ago. This brought to light a new concern that we had with putting in a vegetable garden. Our backyard is mostly shady. The only sunny spot of our backyard is the place that we choose to put our swimming pool. All the obvious places to plant a garden in our yard, simply do not get enough sun.This will be our third summer here. I am very happy to say that we now have a vegetable garden! This is especially wonderful because every day at work I look out my classroom window and marvel at our school garden. Looking at the garden daily made me want one at home all the more.I teach at a school that has a large agriculture component to the students’ learning. Our school garden is impressive and consists of many planted vegetables, an orchard, and farm animals. To help fund the program the students cultivate and raise starter plants. At their recent plant sale, I purchased 15 starter vegetables. This was the beginning of our new garden.
The 15 starter packets sat on my kitchen counter for a week before I knew what we were really going to do with them. This is very similar to my painting of our bathroom – I bought the supplies and started the painting before I really figured out the time required to complete the project. The plants sat, and I walked around the yard trying to figure out my garden dilemma.Then in my blog crawling, I came across the idea of a front lawn vegetable garden at Shawna Coronado’s Blog, Making a Difference Every Day. Her post was titled, Front Lawn Vegetable Garden Design – Sun Ray Garden. Shawna’s design was beautiful! I was not about to devote an entire front lawn to a garden, but it did give me the idea that a garden in the front of the house could work and work well. We have a large strip next to the driveway that I have been saying needs to be made into a parking strip to help accommodate the cars of the many drivers in our household. That was the plan.
The plan before I had 15 starter plants, hand cultivated by students, sitting on my kitchen counter. When I shared my new vision for the front side yard with my husband, Gavin said, “Ummm, really?” Followed by, “OK. I’m easy.” He then measured the space, drove to Home Depot, came home with the lumber, and started building.
Our front yard has an incline, so I wanted the vegetable beds to be set into the ground at various levels. I call this a stepped-staircase raised vegetable bed.
To give the beds a finished look, Gavin added a top frame. He added this after they were in the ground thinking it needed something more to finish off the look. I think they are beautiful!
Then I planted. We have zucchini, green beans, cinderella pumpkin, five different tomato varieties, three different peppers, lettuce, and kale. I plan on planting around the beds as well. So far so good! I will keep you posted on how or garden grows.
Lettuce and Kale
