So, I haven’t been able to go as far into this as I’d like but I keep seeing ladies (@donyx I’m partially blaming you) with their harvests and it makes me want to do more next year. I want to have raised garden beds either right off of my back patio or in the back corner of my yard. Until I figure out where to put them, I can’t really make them. I’ve spent the last couple of years working strictly out of pots. Definitely not the most effective way to grow anything aside from herbs but it at least gives me a chance to go through the motions to make sure I’m taking proper care of each plant.
Last year, I had some cherry tomatoes, watermelon, and cucumber. My watermelon obviously didn’t like being in a planter box and kept getting attached by birds so it never made it past the size of a baseball. My tomatoes flourished, though for it to actually provide enough fruit for a meal I’d probably need 3 or 4 more plants. The 2 I hade just weren’t cutting it (and I definitely know this since the 2 tomato plants I have this year came from random rotten tomatoes from last year). My cucumbers got attached by these fuzzy little white bugs and they destroyed my plant. Additionally, before the bugs, the flowers were never pollinated properly so I only had about 20 tiny ones to ever form and they died before they were even an inch long.
This year, I had 2 tomato plants, a few bell pepper (seeds saved from stuffed pepper night), a couple of banana pepper, basil, celery (from base cuttings), spearmint, lemon mint (randomly growing behind my AC unit), and green onion. I’m almost to a point of being able to harvest my first bell pepper.
My goal for next year is to grow yellow squash, zucchini, cucumber, tomatoes (cherry and Roma), bell pepper, romaine lettuce, green beans, and carrots. I also want to try and have an actual compost pile as well.
Eventually, I’m going to get a few chickens as well. Even though I have an HOA, we are still allowed 4 since the area is still technically a rural area. Fresh eggs, free fertilizer, scrap disposal, and 4 reasons for me to use Harry Potter references when I name them. I want to have huge containers of flowers around the yard as well so that plenty of bees will come and hang out.
