How our first garden started
“Wow, your wife is really good at gardening,” our new neighbor says to my husband, “how long has she been doing it for?”
“Oh this is our first year having a garden,” said my husband.
“Seriously?! This is an amazing looking garden, keep up the great job,” said the neighbor, who bicycles off as my husband is annoyed and rolling his eyes because he’s put in as much effort as I have and loves it too.
Before 2022, we only ever had a few pots on our deck with herbs and a few peppers. The plants did ok, weren’t spectacular producers and mid-way through the season, we’d kind of neglect them and that was that.. so when we decided to really go all in with raised garden beds and starting seeds, it was kind of this big undertaking and leap of faith!
But we did it! Got the supplies, failed the first round of seeds, tried again, they started sprouting, then SURPRISE, we sold our house! Shout out to my mom for babysitting our seedlings for a month and a half! Thankfully we hadn’t set up any garden beds yet so everything could come with us to the new house 🥳
We closed on the new house mid-May and my first priority was setting up the garden beds and filling them.. probably looked a little nuts to the neighbors those first few weeks, but I wanted to get those going so we could get everything planted ASAP.
And guess what?
I did!
I proudly planted all of our plants my mom so carefully took care of, with the help from the boys,
and that night
tornado.
On the first night we slept in the new house fully moved in.
Yup, I wish I was making this up.
Trees down, through the roof, through the window, blocking the garage and yes, you guessed it.. all of those beautiful, tender plants we planted 5 hours early… completely. wiped. out.
I kept all the pathetic sticks of a plant in the ground, no point in pulling them out in my opinion, and low and behold, a few weeks later, almost EVERYTHING came back.
Yeah, I’m just as shocked as you are!
Now that would’ve been awesome, if I didn’t get all sad and sprinkled a bunch of random seeds in random places.. so at one point, things were pretty cramped and I had no idea what some of the plants were, but it all worked out! Plants can be thinned, and who cares if your carrots grow in a curvy, wavy line because that’s how water river dried in the soil 😂
I’m just going to be that person and tell you right now, not everything in your garden will turn out how you expected or planned it would, and that’s ok. Things won’t work, things will work way better than you thought it would, and I think that’s kind of the point, you grow and learn just as much as your garden grows.
I know I was afraid to start gardening
It seemed like this big daunting thing I would screw up, but it turned out to be one of the best things ever and how we’re now planning a massive garden expansion in 2023.
And if you’re still not convinced and nervous to start, just remember our garden was taken out by a tornado and still turned out great with tons of tomatoes, peppers and oh, how could we forget the ridiculous amounts of basil!
You really can do this on whatever scale works best for you, your lifestyle and your space.
