Starting small

For those interested in their building their first garden, I have two pieces of advice:

1.  Start small

2.  Make plans for irrigation from the very beginning

Start Small

Being a recovering perfectionist, I don't handle failure well.  I knew that in order to continue with the garden adventure, I needed to take it on in pieces.  The first year, we put in three raised beds, the blackberries and a bean pole tepee.  Every year since, we have added a little more.  I look back at this picture and amazed by how much the space has changed.  I certainly would have set myself up for failure if I had attempted more, as it was, this was a large first undertaking.  The learning curve was VERY steep that year as I learned about those cute little bunnies and how they will devour all of your labors overnight along with other various difficulties. 

If you are working with a yard smaller than mine, as most in North Texas likely will be, but you want a garden, I encourage you to use existing space or build a little bed in the corner of your yard.  Even with the most stringent of HOAs, there are several edible plants that you could work into  front yard landscaping.  Swiss chard is an obvious choice in my opinion.  I have even seen it used in municipal planters as a landscaping plant.  It will grow with little to no attention from spring until the coldest of cold.  This year mine survived well into January.  Last year, one of my plants from the previous year came back for another season.  Very small leaves can be harvested for salads or the larger leaves can be cooked in various ways.  I hope to incorporate it into our diet more this year.

Here are two swiss chard plants worked into my perennial and herb bed (with a tomato and a few annuals as well).  This work in progress bed runs along the side of the house and the driveway, clearly visible from the street.  I likely won't put tomatoes in there this year, but I love that I live in a neighborhood that I can if I want to!  But I digress, beyond the tomato plant, can you tell which is the edible plant in this picture?

Here is malibar spinach in the same garden garden with the swiss chard.  It has beautiful little berries on it and thrives even in the heat of summer.

Make Plans for Irrigation

If you live anywhere with rain patterns that can be erratic, do not plan a garden without making a plan for how you will water it.  I didn't put any thought into how I would water.  Standing out with a hose got tiring quickly and I knew without something in place, once the days really started warming up I would kill everything.  Walmart had reasonably priced drip irrigation and, while it took an investment of time to get it all installed in my beds, it was worth it once the heat of summer set in.  Last year we added an automated timer which allows me to schedule a time for the maze of hoses to run to all of the areas of the garden. 

On the to do list this spring is to re-assess my set up.  Last year I attempted to recycle some soaker hoses into my new spaces and it was fraught with complications, most commonly the soaker hoses springing yet another leak.  I took pictures of some of my watering, but evidently I have a corrupt disk and they didn't make it to my computer.  I plan to get out and work for a few hours today so hopefully I can get some new pics taken.

Comments

[Madhavi]

Looking at the Malabar spinach....it looks so good anad healthy...make me want to invite myself to your back yard:-)Where did you get the seeds/plant? I finally had my raised beds ready, I have 2 beds (4x8 feet) and some seeds are going and will let you know when they come out, I currently started with my Indian squash variety.

[SaM]

This is a picture from last year. I am hoping it will return from seed this year. I had it popping up all over the place last year from the plant I had in the previous year.

I don't know why I didn't think to save some seed last fall?! I will gladly share a plant when it starts to grow from all the seed that fell to the ground and if I can find a transplant somewhere, I'll pick up an extra for you!