Early Veggie Garden Start

^^^naughty pup^^^For Christmas my sister and brother-in-law gifted my husband and I an above ground garden planter, built by them! My brother-in-law is always building new furniture and actually custom builds these planters (reclaimed or new wood, ours is reclaimed 🙂 ) and sells them as a side hobby outside of his real job as a small animal vet.  We worked with them to decide on what size we thought would be best and we decided on a square 4′ x 4′ planter. We figured this size would be big enough without being too obtrusive in the yard, and not too big that we would have an overflow of veggies on our hand. But who am I kidding, I don’t exactly have the greenest of thumbs so I really just didn’t want to end up with a plethora of dead plants haha.  Anyways, the 4′ x 4′ size really is nice and we’re able to easily walk around the garden on all sides making watering and harvesting easy.

Before planting anything we filled the planter with a soil/mulch/fertilizer mixture that my sister and brother-in-law brought over with the planter (almost a whole trailer full). We filled the entire planter to the brim knowing that the soil would settle and drop about 6 inches or so. After a day or two we added a bag of nice garden soil to lay down a nourishing base for the vegetables to hopefully flourish. Now we were ready to start planting!

When choosing what veggies we wanted to plant we (obviously) wanted to pick veggies we knew we would eat and tend to be regulars in our meal choices. We also wanted to make sure we didn’t overcrowd the planter but also tried to maximize the space.

What we have planted so far…

• Black Prince Heirloom Tomatoes
• Black Cherry Heirloom Tomatoes
• Hot Chili Peppers
• Sweet Basil
• Thai Basil (my husband is obsessed with all asian food and would eat it for every meal if he could)
• Heirloom carrots

To be planted in a month or two when the weather warms up more…

• Bok Choy
• An assortment of hot peppers

After getting the first round of vegetables planted we topped them off with a little bit of plant food to again, hopefully ensure that they actually grow and don’t just die like most things I plant 🙂 If all goes well we should have some really delicious veggies to look forward to this summer, but I mostly can’t wait to eat caprese salads from my backyard all summer long!