Tate Garden

Every Spring I usually put a few vegetables out in the backyard. This usually consisted of a few tomatoes, peppers and herbs. This year I decided to expand my effort and create some new space for my garden and add some variety. I started doing some research and was really surprised to learn about the variety of things you can grow throughout the year. My expansion idea blossomed into the idea that maybe I can grow seasonal vegetables and be partially self sufficient. I like to cook and having fresh ingredients with great flavor, that are more healthy and save money in the long run got me even more motivated. I found a few websites that really helped me to learn. They are: http://www.urbanharvest.org/, http://www.houstonvegetablegarden.com/ and http://www.squarefootgardening.com/. The first website, Urbanharvest, was started by Dr. Bob Randall who wrote a helpful book called "Year Round Vegetables, Fruit and Flowers for Metro Houston". This book goes into great detail about how to grow an organic garden and is a must have in my opinion. It contains helpful charts that tell you what you can grow, when and how. I also got the new Square Foot Gardening book by Mel Bartholomew. His technique is to grow more in less space with less work. I have taken some ideas from both to create my own garden. This is my first run and kind of experimental. We'll see what happens. I took some picture to track the progress.

This is the before picture of my first plots.

I took some advice from the Square Foot Gardening method and used square wood frames for my first plots. These are made out of 2 x 10 lumber.

The next step was to acquire some soil. I used a combination of organic compost, rose soil, peat moss, and expanded shale. Here is my first load of compost.

The good thing about gardening especially for me is something people call excercise. Whew!

I used a combination of weedblock and newspaper to prevent weeds from coming through underneath.



Okay, so I had the camera and though it would be a good shot after all that work.

I deciced that I need more real estate so I converted a flower bed into another vegetable plot. I forgot to take a before picture of all of the overgrown shrubs in this area. You can kind of see them in some of the above pics. I pulled up the shrubs and put a bunch of compost, peat moss, rose soil and another yard of vegetable mix to improve the soil quality here. I have been mulching this area with shredded hardwood mulch for a few years so I think I will get some good results in this area. The added bonus is my Koi pond. It naturally attracts frogs and toads that eat a lot of bugs that could be considered pests in my garden. It is a good organic option too.

I visited several places that sold seeds and plants and loaded up. Here is my initial setup. You can see my square foot grid also in the first two plots. This is the idea from Mel Bartholomew about assigning each square foot a purpose and creating more yield in your crop. I ended up with the following vegetable choices so far: a variety of Tomatoes, peppers, herbs, eggplant, okra, cantaloupe, green beans, pole beans, radish, endive, arugala, onions, squash, cucumbers and zuchini.

Vegetable plot number 2 is planted also with some great advice from my father-in-law who was in town for the week.







Anna and Sophia were busy in the sandbox although they certainly were helping Daddy.



My little buddy Joseph sporting his favorite camo hat decided to take it easy and swing. Sophia is still getting use to the fact she doesn't get the baby swing anymore.


My first fruits - the radishes are sprouting.

And the Arugula....

Like I said before, this is experimental and I expect I will make some mistakes. My spacing and timing of a few items are in question. I will see how it goes and adjust as needed. I have some trellises to build this week for some of the climbing vines. I am also researching options for adding another plot along my fence. I am looking at concrete blocks to frame this area in. I am thinking I might go with an area approximately 4x20. This will be phase 2 of my gardening project. I would like to start some purple hull peas in this area if I can get in ready in time and within my budget. I will keep you updated on the progress.