We've made some serious progress folks!
#1 The grass is alive!
#2 The fence is stained!
#3 The first garden bed is actually put together.
Think we may finally have this down, we're still at an impasse though, but I'll explain that after I show you all the pretty pictures!
Here you'll see what I call "the back 40." We have a ridiculously large back yard for the city dwelling we inhabit. Frankly, I love it. We can look outside and see nothing but trees and our lawn. This was why it was so important to us to get that back to living before starting the garden - one thing at a time! You'll notice, way yonder in the distance, a dusty patch next to the house, that's where the garden beds will be placed. Likely we'll have to rent a tiller to get the ground broken up and able to sustain life, it's a bit like concrete at the moment.
Here are the bed's that will house our veggies and herbs! We have a total of 2 sets. Let me tell you the wonderful story that goes behind our attempt to get this all finished this past weekend: We had just finished staining the fence, and were on a roll with the ol' paintbrushes, so we decided "no time like the present" to just go ahead and stain the pieces for the beds! Uh, yeah, there are about 50 bagallion pieces to these darn things! We hauled them all out to the side of the house (opposite to the side of the garage, mind you) and proceeded to start staining. What we discovered was this: it was a) very messy to do these one at a time; and b) very time consuming! So they all got moved up to the patio until we could procure a power drill from one of our father's to put them all together first, and then stain them!
Dear, sweet Ryan spent the better part of his evenings this week getting the main boxes (of the first bed) assembled after borrowing my dad's drill. He's been having fun, I'm pretty sure. You know guys and power tools ;). There are still about 25 bagallion pieces still left to be put together from the auxiliary beds, plus the whole other bed....it's going to be a process!
So we just have to stain them now, and till the ground and make it life sustaining, lay down some week barriers around the boxes, and then (probably the most important thing), figure out what the heck we're supposed to do to keep a garden alive!
Yeah, you read that right, we discovered that we actually have no clue what we're doing. I tried looking at Farmer's Almanac, planting by our Zone (8A), reading blogs, but I'm so confused. I've been a city slicker too long! My family used to have huge, sprawling gardens (of which I was required to help maintain), but when I left for college 12 years ago, that all stopped and my head got filled with academic pursuits and purged all the gardening knowledge! We're completely lost, and it makes me sad!
We know what we want to plant: tomatoes, onions, garlic, squash, peppers, green beans, and various herbs (there may be more I'm forgetting....) but we really don't know where to start. So I put this question out to the universe (or at least other backyard gardeners), where do you go for information? How do you know when to plant, how deep to plant, etc. Do you just go by the seed packets, or do you use an online resource? Thanks for any help! More to come soon (promise!).
