DIY Vegetable Garden: Plants in the Ground!

Here is my third (and final...maybe...) installment of the DIY Vegetable Garden series. I've learned a whole lot in my gardening endeavors this year and have a lot to take into next year from it. 

Since it was so rainy this spring, we weren't able to put anything in the ground until almost June!! Hopefully that doesn't have too many adverse affects on the harvest this summer, but now it's just a wait and see game. 

HOME GARDEN STEP FOUR: (Finally!) Put your plants in the ground. 

For both the raised beds and the in-ground garden, we put soil on top of the weed-blocking tarp, for aesthetic purposes. Neither Brandon nor I want to look at black tarp all summer.

So, in order to place our plants, we first had to cut through the soil/tarp and then dig our holes. This was actually pretty easy, because most of the time the spade was adequate to cut through the tarp. 

Plants in the ground! 

Well, except the rosemary. We are keeping that one potted so we can bring it inside for the winter and have year-round rosemary!

So what did we decide to plant this year?

• 20 pepper plants, some sweet, most of them hot
• 15 tomato plants, all different varieties
• Mesclun lettuce
• Spinach
• Swiss chard
• Thyme (regular and lemon)
• Basil
• Chives
• Dill
• Lavender
• Broccoli
• Carrots (three whole rows!!)
• 2 potatoes...but we want more!
• Red cabbage
• Brussels sprouts
• Sweet corn (this is a big experiment for us)
• Watermelon
• Butternut squash
• Eggplant
• Cilantro
• Onions
• Sugar snap peas
• Asparagus

Phew! I think we're going to start our own CSA :)

Here are a few things I've learned about gardening:

• Spring greens need to get outside early because they like it cooler (ahem, broccoli!) so if you can't put them in the ground, pot them and put them outside. Broccoli will go straight to seed if it matures when it's too warm. 
• If you don't have enough room for all the seeds that you started in your garden, expand your garden!! We didn't have enough room for the vine plants so we added on to our in-ground garden in an area that is still separate from the rest of the plants, so the vines don't take over. 
• Asparagus takes 2+ years until you get a harvest out of them. Just be patient. 
• Next year, I want to try rolling "seasons". Essentially put in spring plants early, and once they're harvested the summer plants will go in, then once those are harvested, late summer/fall plants will go in. Might be able to catch the tail end of this idea this year. We'll see. 

Does anyone else have a garden at home? What did you plant?

In case you missed them, here are the other two installments of my DIY Vegetable Garden posts:

• DIY Vegetable Garden: Tilling and Filling
• DIY Vegetable Garden: Weed Block and Potting Saplings

DIY Vegetable Garden: Weed Block and Potting Saplings

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This is part two of my DIY Vegetable Garden post series. I realize that it may be a bit too late in the year for this already, but we were late getting basically everything in the ground because of the wet, wet spring we had.

HOME GARDEN STEP THREE: Cover planting area with weed block tarp


Last year, the garden quickly got overrun with weeds and for two people who work full time, it was too much to keep ahead of. This year we're trying Weed Block. We put down the weed block tarp and then (mostly for aesthetic purposes) covered it with more soil. I don't think that is actually necessary, but I'd rather look at soil than at tarp with plants poking through.

When you put plants in the ground, you're going to have to cut through the tarp to place them. So far, the weeds have been pretty subdued in the places where the tarp was laid. 

Except for those stupid maple whirlybirds. They drive me nuts.

{photocred:http://www.flickr.com/photos/georgesgewels/3414662636/}

And they're sprouting everywhere!

This is what our garden looks like with the tarp down and soil covering it: 

(please note the whirlybirds all over the place)

HOME GARDEN STEP THREEPOINTFIVE: Get saplings potted

We had to take an extra *half* step in the home garden process because of all the rain this spring. The ground was saturated throughout April and May and we could not put the seeds that we had started, or the saplings that we had bought into the ground. 

We were able to fill the raised beds with veggies towards the end of May, but no luck with the in-ground garden. Our saplings were starting to look sad in the plastic containers that they were purchased in, so we decided to invest in lots and lots of little pots. 

If your plants are starting to die because they can't go in the ground, pot them and place them in the area of the garden that they will be when they're planted. 

This bought us an extra couple of weeks until the ground dried up (helloooo 90 degree weather!) Stay tuned next time for getting your plants into the ground, and what to do if you have more plants than space in the garden!

Happy Gardening,

In case you missed it, here is the other installment of my DIY Vegetable Garden posts:

• DIY Vegetable Garden: Tilling and Filling