Today it’s finally sunny and although the view is still lacking some green, the blue sky and the temperatures in the 50s give the air a slight spring feel to it. It’s all I need to get excited for warmer months, sunnier days and finally getting my dream garden going!
Have you seen the movie “It’s Complicated” with Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin? It’s great entertainment. Although Meryl Streep has the lead role, she just might have been overshadowed by another character… her garden!!!
The first time I saw it I was in love! I mean, holy-growing-perfectness! It is the most beautiful, dream-worthy, straight out of hollywood garden! And after googling it during the movie, I Googled it on the internet to find many others feel the same! Tons of pics found, not only of the garden but also the house, on blogsites and pinterest. Meryl Streep’s character had this garden, an incredible house and her own bakery in town. And her three children were JCrew perfect. What the hell was Alec Baldwin’s character’s problem? Blind to her amazingness? Actually he realized, came back wanting her.
Having a garden has been my hope for a long time. We had one at our previous house in NJ, it did well and as we were ready to harvest, the deer and groundhogs were quicker than we were; they ate very well. I don’t hunt, but man a shotgun would’ve been useful. My mom used to sit on the dock of our lake in Ohio, shotgun in hand and shoot the heads off the turtles because the turtles would eat her baby ducks and swans. Seems cruel, I know, but the baby ducks and swans being pulled under and swallowed is cruel. BB (my mom) is an incredible woman herself.
There’s my sister in front of our lake with one of the baby ducks. Seeeee! How adorable! Do what ya gotta do BB!
So my husband and I have plans and a goal to build our garden fenced in, protected the best we can from hungry animals so I don’t have to get a shotgun. <—-I could never do anythin but if my cute nephew Ashton were nearby, he’d take care of the pests.
I like having a cute country fence (along with the chicken-wire needed) making it look like you’re stepping into an oasis! A passageway to calming but vibrant beautiful greenery!
There are so many great ideas on pinterest too! No deer getting through this nice fence!
But I do like it airy and flowing nicely with our yard, just enough fence to keep out the animals, but allowing for the garden to have that natural companionship with our home! Just like on the movie or the photo below.
The next task is creating raised beds. I love the walkways between rows of gardens, just the beauty of it and how it allows you to get to the plants with more ease. The dirt on our property is terrible for growing anything! It’s ironic because just a few miles west is probably the best soil in the country! So having raised beds allows us to fill them with fantastic fertile soil!
And it helps with better drainage, deep rooting, and preventing too many weeds! My husband is just ridiculously talented when it comes to building so he’s going to be able to create the beds perfectly. He builds things all the time, that’s his business but it’s also just what he does. He needs a project, he’ll go build something. He built my son’s toy chest people think was bought from Pottery Barn and he built all the best and most creative parts of our house! The other day he built a bench. Just went out, built a bench for his motogear in the garage in minutes and used it to put on his boots. So we found examples of raised beds made from wood.
We also found stone raised beds. Dan owns Red Oak Landscaping and he’s also a stone masonry, the owner of Rocstone. Some of the stone examples we’ve seen are beautiful and I know he could do something incredible!
So for a while now I’ve been trying to figure out what I’d like to plant, what I really would love to see grow in my very own garden! My friend Ashley did awesome last year with her garden, she brought us some tomatoes, crisp cucumbers, and yummy melons along with some flowers!
Here I go trying to work my green-thumb. There’s a great deal of information on the internet, but it can get… complicated! I figure I’d like to grow cucumbers and dill and peppers to make spicy pickles for my husband! And also lettuce and spinach because I eat a ton of salad throughout the summer. Then tomatoes would always be great, Kali loves tomatoes! And some herbs and garlic, I use Oregano and Basil almost everyday. I searched on how to plant and grow each and found that some things are compatible, and some are not.
This is where our raised garden beds will really come helpful, we can plant what grows together best in each bed. Some great websites with very useful information I found here:
burpee.com garden.lovetoknow.com
Then I also found this interactive garden planner here: http://vegetableplanner.vegetable-gardening-online.com/ but it didn’t help with incorporating the correct spacing for each vegetable, beside eachother and distance between rows and how big a bed should be. So I began figuring out how far apart my cucumbers should be and that if I’m going to try for broccoli I need to space them 18″ apart and lettuce I’ll have to space 6″ apart as well as spinach while garlic can be 4-6″. Hopefully I can pull this off. I eventually found that if I’m working with two 4×4 raised beds and one 4×12, I could space the vegetables to what is preferable with enough to grow everything! Plus I’d have room to walk between beds, ranging from 2′ to 3′. Here’s my rough drafts, with the math, measurements and idea of how much I could plant in each spot. I’m thinking the 4×12′ might be changed to two 4×4 after I talk to my husband. I’m not sure how to angle it, which direction should face south, etc.
Maybe the movie title comes from how complicated the garden details were to get it so perfect and actually not the relationship.
A ton of help and inspiration came from bonnieplants.com especially for the 4×4 Tomato bed and the Pepper bed! And I nice video of how to plant carrots from thompson-morgan.com
I had a sweet little helper last year with our flower garden! I’m thinking she’ll have fun getting dirty this year!
