My New Garden {Part 1}

Hi, friends!

We have been so busy around here the past few weeks, and one of those reasons is because we have started a new garden on our property!

We moved here after the spring planting season last year, so I had to wait til this year to start my new garden. I am NOT a gardener, but I desperately want to be, so I have to start sometime, right?!

For the location of our garden, we decided we wanted it next to our chicken coop on top of our hill. This is where we hope to build our home someday. I had originally planned to plant right in the ground, but we have very difficult dirt in our area. It has a TON of rocks in it (big ones,) and it is hard and full of clay. It was have taken us FOREVER to remove all the rocks, and we would have to do a ton of amending to the soil, so we decided to get raised garden beds instead.

Adam and Eli were a huge help with my garden. They helped me put all the garden beds together.

These are the garden beds I chose off of Amazon…

Click on the pictures above, and it will take you to Amazon to view the garden beds. ❤️

We went to a local mulch company here in our town to get soil to fill up our garden beds. It took 6 truckloads to fill them all up!

Again, Eli and Adam were a huge help to me! Thank you, Lord, for giving me all these boys. 😂

We had one of our good friend’s son, Gray, helping us out one day too. It was a lot of work starting this garden from scratch.

Under and around all of the garden beds, we layered cardboard boxes.

Several Gardners I follow on instagram have done this and said that it helps a ton with weed control. So Sania and I spent a couple weeks popping in to Lowe’s and Dollar General grabbing broken down boxes when we could. It took us a while, but we got it covered!👊🏼. I think it will be worth the extra work.

We went to the same company to get mulch for around our garden beds. The were out of the cheaper walking much that I was going to buy, so they gave me the more expensive “playground” mulch for the same price. WOOT! I was so excited. 🥳

The boys used our ATV to get the mulch around the garden beds. When they were done, I could finally see my garden coming together, and I LOVED it!

Before I could plant anything in my garden beds, we needed a fence to keep the critters out. I would have loved to have just installed a 4 foot fence, but we have a lot of deer up on top of our hill. We decided our fence should be at least 6 feet high to deter them from jumping over and gobbling everything up.

So Adam and Luke used an auger to drill some holes for our fence poles, and then Adam built me a beautiful fence.

It was a little tricky because our new garden is on a slope and uneven ground, but Adam did a great job!

We used welded fence wire from Tractor supply to put on our fence.

We also got two 4 x 16 ft cattle panels from Tractor Supply to create an arched trellis for our green beens to grow up on! This is my favorite part of my new garden.

I’m hopin’ and a prayin’ that the beans grow up to create a beautiful leafy tunnel for me to walk through, similar to this….

So what do you think?

Do you have any great garden tips or advice for me? I need it!

I’ve been asking my dad for advice too because he has become quite the gardener over the years. ❤️ I got to see his beautiful garden when we went home to Kentucky on Mother’s Day weekend. It was so good to spend time with him and my brother and sister. (But we sure missed Mom! She would be so proud of Dad’s garden.)

We have planted some vegetables in our garden, and I will be sharing with you the progress in my next garden post. I’m having so much fun with it all!

Have a blessed day, friends!

Traci

14 Comments

  1. Traci, Your first garden is looking fabulous! The one thing I can tell you is that we found staggering when we planted various veggies helped to keep all of them from being ready to pick, freeze, can, etc., was helpful. And we seemed to always plant too many of one thing, so at times we had more than we could use or even share. The deer down here can easily jump over a 6’ fence, if they want too. Hopefully the rabbits won’t be too destructive, but I’m sure they will appreciate having extra greens to munch on.

    1. Staggering the planting is a great idea. I will have to keep that in mind. So far, we haven’t had any trouble with the rabbits or deer. #fingerscrossed
      xoxo

  2. You are going to LOVE that garden when it produces fresh produce for your family to eat. My suggestion would be that you plant some grape tomatoes in your garden. Not only are they delicious, but some of them will get away from you and fall onto your soil. Just leave them, let them decay and turn the soil under for next year. The fallen tomatoes will add acid to your soil, which vegetables love. They will also produce new plants for next year. The same is also true for full size tomatoes. Also, many vegetable tops and stems are edible greens. Celery tops and parsley stems, for instance, can add flavor to soups, but celery tops and carrot tops are also edible as parts of salads and other dishes. There are cookbooks for that, but you can probably also find free websites. with recipes.

  3. Your garden is going to be great!!! I love what you’ve done and I look forward to seeing everything grow!!!

  4. Wow love it. I too just moved to the country and am trying to figure out how to keep the plethora of deer out of my garden. Fun to watch but I know they will be destructive to my garden.

  5. We have many deer too and we’ve been told you have to build an 8′ fence. I hope your 6′ does the job for you. Your garden looks so neat. I love the new planters like you did that people are doing. My son and daughter in-law did similar ones as they have bad soil too in Central Oregon. They stay cold into April, so to be able to get started a little earlier and not fear a freeze, they bought the covers for theirs that went with their stainless type planters like yours. They look like little green houses for each planter. You can zip them on the side to get into them to water and harvest, until its nice enough to take them off. They bought both their planters and covers at a Wilco. I have never gardened due to the deer and we didn’t really want a huge fence on our property, as its not sunny enough where we’d want it, unless we come too close to the house. Have fun. It will be fun to hear about your harvest.

    1. Thanks for the info! Yes, I hope my fence is tall enough. I was planning on adding string lights above them which should get them to 7-8 feet. And I’ve heard the lights help keep them away. I hope it works! Thanks for all the gardening info! I’ll share how it goes!

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