Backyard Gardening: The Plan

For years I have wanted to have a garden.  Like a real garden that would actually grow and put off fruits and vegetables. I would have even settled for plants that didn't bear any food.  However, it is a well-known fact that in the past I have had a brown thumb.  There are even arguments that could be made to say that I had a black thumb.  I have been HORRIBLE at growing both indoor and outdoor plants.  I have only kept one plant alive in my entire life, not including the plants that we have in our front yard right now that my mom takes care of during the day.

I am, historically, a difficult plant owner.  I either forget to water them, or I don't pay attention to which plants need sun, which plants need shade, etc.  I can blame some of it on the Texas climate, because for months during the summer the ground in Texas feels like it's on the face of the Sun, but that's only a little piece of it.  Other people can keep plants and gardens alive in Texas.  I should be able to do this. 

I have decided to take a stand this year.  No more procrastinating.  This is going to be the year.  I am going to build raised beds in my backyard and plant a garden.  I have decided that I am going to plant a little bit of a lot of different items that way we can see what is successful in the area that we are in and what we would potentially like to do next year.  This is a learning garden for all of us.

We don't have an ideal set up in our backyard for a garden because about 4-5 feet out from our front porch starts this fairly steep slope all the way down to our fence at the end of our property line.  I read on some one's website re: raised beds that, ideally, you would want the long sides of your beds to face north and south, which would mean that we would need to build the beds on the slope.  I am not sure of the logistics of this plan, but since I am doing the actual marking out of the beds tomorrow and hopefully the building this weekend, I will let you know when I know. 

My mother and I were running some errands today with the kids and ended up at Lowe's in the garden section.  I went ahead and bought some plants that I would like to plant that can grow in pots indoors until the beds are built and the temperatures have leveled out more.  I bought jalapenos, two different varieties of tomatoes, oregano, flat leaf parsley, onion bulbs and a small blueberry bush.  I need to do some further research because there is a sign on the blueberry bush that says that it requires a pollinator and I have NO idea what that means.

Eventually, I would like to have the following items in my garden:

• at least one variety of lettuce (Lowe's had a salad mix which I thought looked neat)  
• onions
• potatoes
• tomatoes
• cucumber
• zucchini
• oregano
• parsley
• mint
• blueberries
• jalapenos
• bell peppers
• carrots

I have that one bush of blueberries that will be external to the beds but everything else will go within the beds.  I am thinking that I would like to build two raised beds.  Anything else and I think that it would require more work than I would be in for at this time. 

Next up: building the raised beds