Our little homestead started with one small section of our backyard, what a surprise to find out how much food this little garden bed could produce.
Step One: Planning the Garden Bed
You can see in this picture we have two big Red Wood trees in our yard. When we started planning the garden bed, we wanted it to be multi-functional. It would provide the trees with more stability at the base and a place to plant both sun and shade vegetation.
Step two: Building the Garden
This small little section wasn’t laid with sod like most of the backyard, it was covered in drainage rock. My husband decided to purchase some treated wood. He got 4 x 4 posts, and 2 x 8 x 12 planks for the siding. We decided to use it as the base for the raised garden bed.
Step Three: Building the Soil
We live in front of a plot of cultivated land, the farmer next door grows herbs. When we first moved in we had mounds of soil lining the garden bed against the fence. It really wasn’t suited for gardening until after I dug out the garden beds and moved the excess dirt (I couldn’t even call it soil at the time) into another area of the yard.
This dirt was dense like like, so we knew we needed to aerate the soil and add ingredients that would allow for water drainage and movement for roots.
Once the garden bed was built we moved a lot of the dirt into the large Red Wood garden bed and mixed the top layer of soil with mulch
Step Four: Planting
Our first season with this bed we grew cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, small cabbage, carrots, onions, and lettuce.
Now, I grew up in a city area, so this was my first experience with planting vegetables. I didn’t know much about pairing plants or garden rows so I kinda just scattered seeds everywhere.
For my first harvest it wasn’t terrible but my plants definitely ran out of room and I had an overgrown garden.
The second season we continued with the cherry tomatoes and onions, as well as adding some potatoes, kale, and sweet peas. BUt this time I attempted to section them off and given the a little more room. All of these vegetables came from heirloom seeds, here.
Step Five: Watering
All fruit and vegetable varieties do need thorough watering when planted outside, especially during the hot summers. If it was between 70-85 degree I watered every other day. When it got to be 90-110 degrees we watered everyday. Our garden bed gets sun 6-10 hours during the summer days, so we needed to prep them for the heat.
Step six: Harvest
I’m starting my journey towards preserving, drying, and storing my harvest. More to come on those adventures. But with our first and second harvest we were able to feed our family beautiful home grown salads, and garnish sandwiches with lettuce, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, and carrots.
Starting small is essential for busy families like ours who are taking the first step towards fulfilling these homestead dreams. We are working full time jobs and have small children that we want to spend more quality time with before we miss these precious years.
But you don’t want to overwhelm yourself trying to learn everything at once. Sustainability is a lifestyle, a long road of learning, trying, failing, and trying again until you succeed.
Now, that we have our garden beds, and can grow a good crop, we are focusing on replenishing the soil with compost and other sustainable methods, like chicken manure.
Happy Gardening!!!
Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are ‘affiliate links’. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission.
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