Backyard garden

Although this blog has been focused on what I cook, Mr. X (which is a much more sensible code-name for the Husband than what I was using previously) and I have recently built a new raised-bed garden. I think this warrants a blog entry. Not only am I extremely proud of what we built, but it will (hopefully) heavily influence my cooking once it starts actually producing.

We once had a garden, in a couple pictures down you can see the remnant of it. The first season we had amazing peppers and tomatoes. The second season the summer was 100 degrees for over 60 days. And we didn't water it well enough. And we didn't really get produce. We kept saying we would try again, but that was about three years ago. Recently we were visiting my dad and step-mom in Corpus -- they have an amazing backyard and an even more amazing garden. Inspired, we came home and got to work.

After our past gardening experience, we knew we wanted to build raised beds. So for the past 3-4 weekends, this is pretty much all we did. We started by putting in a stone path around the locations for the beds. This was loosely based on where the previous garden was (although most of the "garden" was just weeds, grass and dirt).

You can see the only thing that survived in our garden, on the right-hand side, was oregano and rosemary -- we did transplant that to the new garden, although I am not sure it will survive the upheaval. See the very pretty flower on the oregano:

Here is another view (I didn't get a picture before the paths, unfortunately):

You can barely see the tiny fence-like dividers along the back path, which is what we used to map off the beds in the original garden. Luckily they were easy to pull up.

Once the path was laid down we bought a lot of wood. All cedar, which we read was better for garden beds because it withstands rot and is a natural wood (not chemically treated, which could leach into your plants). Mr. X did all the measurements and plans for the building of the bed frames, which were quite long. Our garden beds are around 14" long and 4" wide.

And Mr. X began building the frames of the beds in the garage. You can see in the picture that we stacked two boards on top of one another, and on the long sides also had two boards stacked next to one another. They are anchored and connected by smaller pieces in the middle and with posts in each corner.

(Laser cat watched over the entire process to make sure it went well). Once the frames were built we moved them into place in the backyard, and filled them with A LOT of dirt.

That is just some of the dirt, garden soil, and so forth that we used to fill the beds.

The final step, of course, is planting (my favorite part of the process). We missed the peak planting season due to our procrastination, but we still planted some things. We transplanted the oregano and rosemary. And also put in: eggplant, peppers, okra, corn, squash, cilantro, dill and string beans. I definitely want to put in more herbs, and we will do tomatoes come fall.

But for now, it is looking pretty good!

We did it right this time and mulched once the plants were in the left bed, this helps keep the ground moist and the roots cool in the hot summer sun. It also helps cut down on weeding.

I will post some pictures of the other bed soon, but we planted seeds in that one (as opposed to small plants). The corn, squash, cilantro and dill will all grow from seeds. In that bed we laid down wet newspaper around the edges and covered the paper with mulch just to help prevent weeds. Obviously you can't mulch the bed until the seeds begin to sprout and grow.

We (and by we I mean Mr. X) also put in an irrigation system. A soaker/drip hose runs on a timer and twice a day waters the plants for 20 minutes. Although I still hand water most nights, we are hoping this will help the plants survive the hot Texas summer.

I am sure there will be more posts to come on our adventures in gardening!