Spring is Coming- Raised Vegetable Garden Planning!

Original post by Sarah @ Renewed Upon a Dream, please visit her website for more great ideas!”

As you may remember, Brendan & I are staying in our rental home at least another year, and probably another two-and-a-half, ’till the end of his residency.  So I’ve embarked on a mission to love my rental home more this year.  I am SO excited for spring now because I’m planning to plant a vegetable garden!  I haven’t had a vegetable garden since I was a kid & I’m going crazy in anticipation.  I’ve been hanging out on Pinterest looking at different garden designs & figuring out what I want to plant & where I want it to go.  Check out my garden board here.

One of the best sites I’ve found that’s assisted me in my planning is Gardeners Supply Company.  There is SO much information on that site!  They also sell raised beds & other garden supplies.  One of my favorite things about the site is their garden planner.  Oh my gee this is amazing!  I looked through their pre-planned gardens, but ended up planning my own.  The awesome thing about it is once you figure out how big you want your garden, and what you want planted, it tells you how to grow each vegetable you picked, when to plant it, how to grow it from seed if you want, and how many of each plant will fit in one square foot.  Ah… it’s a lifesaver to have all of this information in one spot!  They have lots of additional tips as well.  If you’re new to gardening like me, you really should check it out.  (Just so you know, they don’t know I exist, I just like their site SO MUCH!)

I’m still kind of thinking about mine in my head & crunching numbers & looking at my space & such, but I’m thinking my garden will be 3×6 feet.  Each square foot is assigned a vegetable.  So 3 will have tomatoes, 2 peppers, 2 potatoes, 2 broccoli, and 1 each of leaf lettuce, spinach, arugula, carrots, basil, parsley, beans, cucumber, and zucchini.  I’m sure some of these will grow better than others, some may die altogether.  But it’s my first year with it so I want to try a lot of different things.

So I’m planning on building & planting my garden here, at the side of the house.

Why the side of the house?  Because the back yard looks like this:

I know, it makes me want to cry too.  And I’m not very confident in it getting much better too quickly.  We’ve lived here for 3 years, and the back yard has always been muddy, & we usually got a puddle here when it rained, but this year we’ve had record amounts of rain & the whole yard is over saturated & swampy & has looked like this for months.  It’ll take many many dry days (weeks!) for it to dry up at this point, which doesn’t look likely.  It really needs better drainage, obviously, but since we rent, I’m not up for putting money into fixing it.  It would involve some major landscaping to fix.  Our landlord does know about the problem, in case you’re wondering, but no action thus-far.  I don’t feel like fighting him about it either since we’ll probably want to stay here a while.  Thus the grass rarely gets cut in that corner of the lawn, and the rest of it we can only cut after a week+ of no rain.

So moving on, I want to build a raised bed.  Our side yard is much drier than the back, however, I suspect that it is probably not dry enough to have a garden sitting right on top of it.  I’d like to do a raised bed about 8-10 inches tall, with another 8-10 inch fence around it.  I recently found a picture that has me thinking that a fence on hinges might work best since it’s a small space.  Like this only not quite so tall.

We don’t want the bunnies getting in there, but I want to be able to reach my plants.  I read that the total height (bed + fence) needs to be at least 18 inches tall to keep out the bunnies.  I don’t think I need to worry about deer here, as we’re in a pretty urban area & I’ve never seen any, but I guess we’ll find out this year.

I also want some cute little garden sticks.  You know the ones that say what kind of plant is there.  I’m not gonna have a big enough garden to not know what the plants are, but still.  They are cute see…

So many great ideas right?  Gonna have to brainstorm what I want to do for that.

All this is to say, I’m super excited!  I plan to get started on building this garden within the next month.  The leafy veggies (spinach, arugula, lettuce, all are supposed to be planted before the last frost, so the sooner it’s ready the better.  It’s never too early to start planning.

Do you grow a vegetable garden?  What are your favorite plants to grow?  What ones do you find challenging?  I’m new at this so any info is great!

I’m linking this post to these sites:
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Our DIY Diaries
Addicted 2 Decorating 
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Fingerprints on the Fridge
I Heart Nap Time 
Vintage Wanna Bee 
Today’s Creative Blog 
Home Stories A2Z 
A Diamond in the Stuff 
My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia 
Organize & Decorate Everything
{Primp}
Southern Lovely 
Somewhat Simple
Crafty Scrappy Happy
The Shabby Creek Cottage 
52 Mantels 
Delightful Order
Two Yellow Birds Decor  
At the Picket Fence
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My Repurposed Life 
Chic on a Shoestring
The Shabby Nest
Making Lemonade 
Whipperberry 
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