One major projects I wanted when I moved was a garden. We had previously tried a garden in our rental with some luck. The two issues were space in the small townhouse backyard and the squirrels that would eat anything that grew before it would be completely ripe for us to pick. I even went so far as building a cage around the garden the second year in an attempt to keep the squirrel out.
It worked, but still it wasn't much space.
When we moved into our home last summer, I immediately knew where the garden would go. It was a large area, fairly flat, and directly out the kitchen and breakfast nook windows for a nice view.
I started searching all of the plants that I wanted to grow including fruit trees in the winter. When February rolled around, I knew I wasn't going to have the budget for all of my major plans so the fruit trees were put on hold. I started buying seeds and indoor starter kits and I grew a very detailed map of exactly what I wanted to plan and where it would be planted.
In March we had a starter tray of various vegetables ready to go.
I had the cable company come out to mark where they buried our cable and phone lines and then I rented a tiller from Home Depot and got to work. Unfortunately it had rained so the dirt was more like mud. While there was a lot of great dirt, there was also some clay mixed in.
The neighbor brought over loads of composted horse manure in a Bobcat for us and eventually I ended up buying a couple cubic yards of soil to help.
As the plants in the starter tray started getting too big, I knew I just needed to get them in the ground and so I ended up planting things in a less organized way than I'd planned.
I admitted to myself that this was my "practice year" and I wouldn't put too much pressure on myself to get everything growing. I just wanted to see what would grow.
We've had a lot of luck with the tomato plants and the watermelon plant looks pretty good. In fact, today we saw that we have our first watermelon.
We had two heads of lettuce come up, but a rabbit feasted on them each time they'd produce leaves. We have some small corn stalks growing and a lot of scallions and garlic bulbs. The pots of potatoes look pretty good and if the carrots weren't over crowded, they would probably be doing well too.
I'm happy with what I've seen and learned and it gets me more excited about next year. I will tiller the entire garden area this fall and mix in a lot of compost material and maybe even some more soil. Next year I will be sure to space things out a bit more and follow the map.
