Check out the rolling photo content at the bottom for updates over the whole summer :^)
Last summer, with limited porch space I did my best to grow two Tomato plants but the incessant summer heat meant keeping them well cared for was difficult (enter Auto-watered Vegetables). Well this year I moved into a new apartment and found myself with a neglected front garden. The plot was overgrown with weeds, tall grass, and a gem of a hydrangea tucked into the corner (more on that later). My girlfriend and I started out by clearing out every square inch of the existing top layer and get a feel for the depth and richness of the soil.
the original plot
hard at work
Along the way we ended up finding what felt like endless numbers of rocks and boulders just below the surface that also needed to be excavated. We eventually ended up using these for demarcation lines around our growing areas. After the area was weeded and rid of rocks, we did our best to turn over the dirt and get a feel for the depth and richness of the soil. Unfortunately, it was poor in both accounts. At the end of the day we left the plot weeded and lined up with what we thought would be good growing rows (we eventually ditched this).
As I mentioned, the soil turned out to be mostly clay and wasn’t particularly deep so we pivoted to using raised garden beds for the vegetables as opposed to planting directly in the soil. I had some left over 16ft 1”x8” lumber from a fence rebuild I helped my parents with that we turned into our new beds. The construction on these was fairly straight forward. We used two stacked planks cut down to 4ft on each side then secured them together in the corners with a 4x4 post cut to length.
cutting the lumber to length
expert assembly
We ended up making two 4’x4’ raised beds and installed them on the back wall to keep them away from the sidewalk. After that we turned over the original dirt in the areas we were planning on planting in and cut it with Pro-Mix to bring some fluffiness back and help with the fertility.
We arranged a variety of Magnolias, moss ross, and Ageratums in the front row and put snapdragons and Nasturtiums in the back and front right corners. You can also see the original hydrangea in the back right of the photo which we decided to keep for the overhaul.
Once the flowers were in we installed the garden boxes and planted our vegetables. This year we went for five (yes five) cherry tomato plants, eggplant, snap peas, and banana peppers. Before I get any shade for having 5 cherry tomato plants I’ll say there are few things that bring me as much joy as going to the garden in the morning and eating cherry tomatoes off the plant until I’m full - I think my plant choice is accurately reflected here. For the final touch we threw some cedar mulch down.
