Carpenters and farmers

This year my husband and I decided to start our first backyard veggie garden.

I should start by pointing out I have no talent for green things outside of killing them. My husband had a house plant for 5 years before we met, and within two I'd offed it.

Naturally, I'm starting big. I couldn't decide which way I wanted to go, so ultimately I ended up with both a container garden and an in-ground raised bed.

I'm primarily growing tomatoes. I don't even eat tomatoes but from what I've read, they're reasonably easy to deal with- so hopefully they'll prove resistant to my efforts of veggicide. Keeping with the grand scale of my project, I selected not one or two, but SIX varieties of tomato plant- the classic Big Boy, Early Girl, Roma, Celebrity, Lemon Boy and my favorite based on its name alone: Mr. Stripey.

I recycled some old buckets that originally stored cat litter into planting containers. They got a thorough scrub, a new paint job, a dozen or so holes drilled in the bottom of each and a chunk of landscaping fabric in the bottom to keep the soil from leaking out through said holes.

Here's a few filled, mulched and planted. I'm mostly sticking with determinant varieties in these containers, as supposedly they grow smaller and more "bush-like" rather than tall and viney. Even so, I painted some tomato cages bright white and added those to the containers as well to provide support.

This is the raised bed we constructed. It's approximately 10'x4'x14" and made from untreated 2x4s of some cheap Home Depot mystery wood. Again, I lined it with landscaping fabric on the sides and bottom to stop soil leakage and weed intrusion.

Nyxie's enjoying our new gardening kick. She's an indoor cat, but I've been taking her outside with me when I work in the yard and she seems to enjoy it.

The finished raised bed, filled and planted. We did a row of tomatoes in the back (left) and herbs at each end (basil and cilantro). Up front I have a lonely jalapeno pepper plant, and the rest of the space is filled with a hodgepodge of red onions, garlic, carrots, yellow bush beans and snow peas. I figured I'd just go the trial and error route with what I plant.. we'll see what actually grows and adjust accordingly next year.