Garden: Take 3

You likely remember me talking about my longings for a garden. Well, as pretty much everything else, nothing ever goes quite as planned, which makes things more interesting. But I am bound and determined to have some sort of organic harvest by the end of the summer!

I decided to go with a raised garden, because that would require the least amount of physical labor on my part, and would be an easy starter garden. So I ordered a kit from Amazon, and visited my local organic gardening store.

The kit came, and I started assembling it. It's smaller than it looks in the pictures - it's 3.5 feet by 7 feet:

 I know. There will be dogs in all the pics. Just prepare yourself. So I laid down that black film so that grass wouldn't grow up into the garden.

 

Next, I got it all sturdy and ready to go for the dirt:

Lookin' good, eh? I was pretty impressed with myself. I was working hard, feeling like I was all...outdoorsy. Oh, except that I forgot to put on sunscreen, so I totally got burned while working outside. Brilliant.

The next task was filling the garden with 100 million pound bags of soil. I don't know how much they weighed in actuality, but I know they were probably like 50 pounds. Seriously.  I almost gave myself a hernia. Here they are:

Notice what is taking place in the picture below. This haunting scene is a re-occurring nightmare that has taken a few weeks to fully resolve. And lots of plant purchases due to the canine appetite for vegetable plants. More to come.

Five bags and lots of sweat later, this is what we have:

Looks pretty stinkin' awesome, huh? So, next comes the fun part! The planting! I purchased a cherokee purple tomato, a roma tomato, some basil, some purple kale, two types of jalapenos, and a red bell pepper. Oh, and some onions, but those became a casualty of war that were not resurrected.

We put up pink trellis things (don't remember what they're called) for the tomatoes, and then I got a green fence to go around the garden, because we realized the only critters we were going to have to worry about sabotaging our garden would be poodles. After they mistook the garden for their own personal sandbox, we high tailed it to the local Home Depot and got the fence. Here is the garden, all planted:  

After we planted everything, I put an organic fish fertilizer on there that's supposed to be pretty stinkin' legit. Ha. No pun intended, but that stuff does stink. Like fish. But it must taste good, because it made my dogs try to eat all the vegetables. So that was impressive.  It amazed me how they managed to get through the fence to the vegetables. Seriously. Through the fence, and they ATE the plants. Back to the store we went. Nature finds a way, I suppose.

By the time it was all said and done, Mark was pretty much BFF with the garden store staff and ended up buying some chicken wire. Fingers are crossed that the problem is solved. I will definitely keep you posted. So far, so good. I can even tell one of the tomatoes that I planted first has grown a lot. WOO!!!!

Any gardening tips from you pros out there? I'm trying to turn my thumb somewhat green!

~Kathryn