First time garden and my mistakes

Posted byALEXANDRA GRIFFITHSPosted inHomesteading beginnerTags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

No poetry on this one guys! But I did want to share with everyone about my garden. This is my first actual garden that I’ve planted and I wanted to go through some of my mistakes and things that I will change for next year.

So this is basically a little tour of what I have, then I can look back on this post and remind myself what I did! Also if any other first timers want to take some tips from my mess ups then that’s great too!

I hope tomorrow morning I can get pictures of the honey bees, they didn’t show up today due to the rain.

Let’s jump in!

Little video tour of how my garden is set up currently

Right off the bat I will say this; I initially thought planting next to this giant bush was a good idea because I don’t use this part of the yard. I will now say, that I shouldn’t have planted here at all. The old wooden fence isn’t treated so it attracts a huge amount of wasps, the bush itself attracts wasps (not sure why) and there just isn’t enough room.

Plus, I put all this in the back yard where the chickens free roam. So to protect my garden, I wrapped fencing around the raised bed I built and in front of the squash plants.

Well needless to say, there is a huge issue here with morning glory and button weeds and they grow insanely fast.

So the combination of wasps and fencing to keep chickens out, made it very hard to weed and control the issue since I didn’t have easy access.

Wyandotte chickens pecking around a kids play mower. On Columbian Wyandotte and two silver laced Wyandotte chickens
Free roam back yard chickens
The ladies

So, next year, I’m planting my garden in the opposite corner of the front yard and making the garden it’s own space! (Why I didn’t think to plant there to begin with, I’ll never know)

Small orange pumpkin on the vine hanging from a nearby bush
This volunteer small pumpkin is hanging off of the bush I mentioned earlier!
Medium sized green pumpkin hidden in weeds
A pumpkin of another plant nestled in the weed forest
Small white wild kitten peeking out from under a bush
One of the wild kittens born in my yard
Very large squash plant vines with many closed blooms and small yellow squash
Summer squash plants (these plants are dinosaurs, I have to put half my body in here just to harvest)
Freshly harvested summer squash and cucumbers
These were harvested yesterday morning! (yellow/summer squash and cucumbers)
Freshly harvested yellow summer squash
Banana pepper and a cucumber freshly harvested this morning
Was able to harvest a cucumber and a banana pepper this morning!
Red and purple radishes harvested
Radishes harvested earlier in the season
Small diy raised garden bed before planting
This is what my garden bed looked like before planting (I have a post about this garden from a while back too)

So in summary, don’t plant your garden next to unfinished wood, other plants or fencing.

Plant your garden in an easily accessible spot away from chickens that like to dig, I lost several tomato plants from them digging to lay in the cool dirt.

My plan for next year, is to have built more raised beds that I can walk around, they won’t be touching any fencing, and won’t be near any other plants.

Hopefully I can get some lavender and marigolds, to plant around the garden space and yard to deter the wasps from coming back… fingers crossed, they are infesting everything here.

So there’s my trailer house farm yard update!

Have a great weekend everyone!

~A

18 thoughts on “First time garden and my mistakes”

      1. Do you mean you can hardly reach anything? Can’t hardly means you can. remember my lesson on double negatives,? It’s like me saying I haven’t done nothing to my garden . But I know what you mean I have to use one of those grabbers to get to my plums pears and apples

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      2. Oh gosh 🤦‍♀️ yes that’s what I meant! That particular pairing of words (which I know is wrong) is such a bad habit. I live in a very small farm town (2,000 people) and poor grammar is abundant 😂 sometimes it sticks!

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      4. Oh, no I completely understand what you mean!! They bother me too, but for some reason that specific one I did… it’s just in my brain 😂 I’ve heard it so much my whole life and it just doesn’t saline wrong anymore.
        The biggest pet peeve of mine though is, instead of someone saying “I saw ___.” they say “I seen” *cringe*

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      7. Hey no problem!! Gardening definitely feels very rewarding and I’m really loving it! I don’t have any trees here though, not yet anyway. My home growing up was lined with fruit trees, my mom got a new on for her birthday almost every year we lived there.

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