We have been preparing the garden for this coming season and finally finished planting most of our seeds today! I thought we could share what we did to prepare the garden and what heirloom seeds we planted!
I made a post awhile back on how we made our raised garden beds, and planting our spring garden, which you can check out here! Since then I promised an update! So here we go… I am new to gardening, other than planting store bought plants and doing nothing further, and let me tell you it has been quite a learning experience thus far! Our spring garden was doing awesome, plants were huge and thriving, got lots of zucchini, potatoes, herbs, and tomatoes, then I started noticing these caterpillars were eating our plants! I got insecticide and sprayed the plants, but come to find out, the insecticide didn’t affect the caterpillars at all, and needed a caterpillar specific spray. By time I got it, it was too late, there were hundreds of them and our plants were dying. It was too much of an area to get back in control. So we basically had to scrap the entire garden and start from scratch, boooooo! The only good thing was the herb garden was unaffected, so that is still doing well!
So this time around, we wanted to improve on what we learned and step it up a little more. We have an area on the side of the house that had pavers making a little side garden, and decided to make it an area for the larger vertical vegetables. Next we mended the soil in the main raised garden with egg shells, compost, and fertilizer, and made a layout for the crops in both gardens. I also wanted to start collecting heirloom seeds. I had been following a company for awhile for tips and advice, both via blog and youtube, and that is MIGardener. Luke is a vibrant young man who has dedicated his life to gardening, and teaching whoever is willing to learn how to garden. He is very inspiring, and started saving and selling his own heirloom seeds, for a lot less than I could find anywhere else too! I got a good variety from them, and really unique ones like rainbow corn, purple tomatoes, and jack-o-lantern pumpkins!
Now that we have finished preparing for my late summer/fall garden, it was time to plant my new seeds. I planted the heat tolerant seeds, and as it cools down into autumn I will plant the cooler varieties. Here are some pictures of the garden that I took today. As you can see in the raised garden the herb garden is intact with; basil, parsley, rosemary, sage, thyme, and oregano, and just added dill and cilantro seeds. In the vegetable garden you see an eggplant, cherry tomato, and row of pineapple that survived the evil caterpillars. Today I planted a habanero pepper, chili pepper, sweet bell pepper, red cabbage, green cabbage, onion, rainbow carrots, collard greens, and broccoli, later adding spinach, lettuce, and arugula. All the white stuff in the soil is crumbled egg shells and “trifecta”, which is also from MIGardener, as a rich fertilizer. You can also see our copper planters we made for our berries, we share how to make them in a post here.
Then in our side garden, I planted rainbow corn, watermelon, pumpkin, cucumber, squash, zucchini, 3 tomato varieties, green beans, lima beans, and asparagus! Oh and sunflowers too!
Lastly I wanted to share the rest of the yard and what is blooming right now, which are our crepe myrtles! They are so gorgeous! We have 13 mature crepe myrtles in our backyard, and I bought two more today, which are different colors, that we want to plant in the goat yard to provide shade and color for the girlies! Here they say hello!
I still have a lot to learn, but love gardening so far! Do you have any garden tips you can share with us? What do you like to plant in your garden? Please share in the comments below!
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