Off Boulevard

Try, try, and in some cases, try over and over again.  Brian and I have been gardening long enough now to know what we’re good at and what veggies we should stick to buying at the store.  There are a couple plants that we’ve learned just don’t want to be friends with us, including two arch nemesis, scallions and herbs.  EVERY year I try scallions in our garden and every year they fail miserably.  It’s probably not a coincidence that Riley always chooses to run through the garden right where they are planted, but none the less, I’m convinced they hate me.  I’ve already replanted them twice this year and here’e their current status -

Sad, I know.  But the ultimate thorn in my side are herbs.  I have tried to grow herbs every way you can think of; indoors in pots, outdoors in pots, in the garden, I’ve even tried Chia Herbs thanks to a white elephant Christmas present.  Sadly, the Chia Herbs were the most successful of them all.  Just when I thought I had sworn off herbs forever, I saw them at Lowe’s this weekend, staring at me, calling my name.  Next thing I know, I was loading them up in my car and taking them to their new home.  So far I’ve managed to keep them alive for four whole days!

As I mentioned in this post, we are trying a couple new plants this year, including corn, cauliflower, and eggplant.  The corn and eggplant are going strong -

But the cauliflower not so much.  I planted it between the onions and the lettuce -

Can’t see anything?  That’s because it never grew.  I planted it twice with no luck and I’d like to think it was due to a bum pack of seeds rather than user error.  We’ll try again next year.

On a positive note, everything else is on the up and up!

Grow baby grow!

Ah, the spring.  As we leave cold weather in the dust, we finally get to escape the house and go for walks, play at the park, fire up the grill, and my favorite, plant our garden!  We got a late start as usual (Brian’s a CPA and is basically MIA from February to mid April because of tax season), but he was able to sneak away for a couple hours last weekend; long enough for us to run to the store to stock up on more garden soil and vegetables to plant.

Last year was our first garden in the raised garden beds we built and for the most part it was pretty successful.  We’ve always had good luck growing veggies (I firmly believe it’s due to the mix of compost and organic dirt that we use, not due to our gardening skills), and now we have the space to get a little creative with what we plant.  Last season we planted tomatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, cucumbers, broccoli,  red and green peppers, red leaf lettuce and romaine lettuce, yellow onions and green onions, and jalapenos.  The cucumbers and tomatoes went crazy and we had more than we knew what to do with.  The carrots were only okay and the yellow onions never really materialized.  The green onions were a no-go, most likely because Riley decided to jump in the garden bed and dig right where they were planted.  Yup, that’ll do it.  The lettuce was our absolute favorite, we had fresh salad for months.  The biggest problem we had, literally, big, was the fact that I was ginormously pregnant right in the middle of the summer so keeping the garden in check was hard to do.  Then after we brought Juice home she trumped anything else in our lives so the garden got a little unruly.  Here’s a pic of our garden in all it’s glory towards the end of the summer -

So when it came to planting this year, we stuck with our classics, took out some duds, and tried a couple new veggies.  In order to fit everything in and make the most of our space, we formulated a plan before going plant shopping -

I’m really excited to add eggplants to the mix this year, and Brian was dying to try corn (I’m not too convinced it will work but how awesome would it be if it did!).   So after making a plan, we headed to the store to buy more organic dirt and our veggies.  To our disappointment, the selection of veggies was really picked over so we only got about half of the plants we needed, even after trying three different stores.  Hopefully we’ll be able to hunt down what we’re missing (sweet potatoes, corn, lettuce, cauliflower) in the next couple weeks.  But first, the tough question…what do we do with Juice while we plant the garden?  Pack n’ Play to the rescue!  We stuck that bad boy in the shade, loaded it up with toys, stuck little Livie in there and had a solid three hours of backyard time.

After we had Livie in a secure location, we mixed in our soil and laid out the garden -

And off to planting we went.  Most everything fit in one bed, while we banished the onions and cucumbers to the back bed.  We also planted seeds for the pole beans around the wigwam we built, and for green onions and chives.

And finally, Brian put up this impenetrable fence to protect the garden from Riley.  And by impenetrable I mean easy to penetrate; Riley has already jumped over the fence and wandered through the garden a couple times.

While the veggies are just getting their start, the fruits we planted last year are well on their way.  We have a couple strawberries plants in a pot which have already started to flower -

And two blueberry bushes which are loaded with fruit -

Ah, the spring…

Ever since we purchased our first house together, Brian and I have been working on upping our “green” karma.  This summer, we got to work creating our own little hippy wonderland in the backyard.  Our first step was moving our compost bin from our old townhouse.  The garden we grew last year using compost dirt was amazing so we got our compost station up and running ASAP.

Step two was building a couple raised garden beds.  We had a perfect spot behind our shed that was big enough for two 8×7 raised beds.  We filled those bad boys with compost dirt and planted our garden -

A couple weeks later the garden was coming along nicely -

Then pregnancy took over and this happened (keeping in mind I was 9 months pregnant when this picture was taken and couldn’t tie my own shoes, let along maintain a garden…)

So our first summer with the raised beds wasn’t a complete success (even though we still grew tons of yummy veggies), but I think we had a pretty good reason Any-who, behind the garden beds we still had a little space left so up went a clothes line that Brian and his dad built.  This has been my favorite addition so far, there’s just something about sheets that have dried on a clothes line.

The final touch this summer was the addition of our first rain barrel.  We bought it from a road side vendor mentioned in this post from Young House Love, and I’m sure we’ll be visiting him soon for another one!

We have some tweaks to make next summer, but hopefully we’ve earned a little street cred with Mother Nature.