How We Set Up Our Food Garden - Love from our Wild

This is our third(ish) year planting a food garden. That’s if I don’t count the container garden from our balcony in Iowa City, or my Aerogarden that I’ve used on and off over the last few years. The first year we moved to Minnesota we lived in a house in the city with a tiny side yard. (pictures directly below) We built a few raised beds and grew tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries, broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, herbs, and the like. By “grow” I mean we put the seeds or plants in the ground, and for the most part, kept them alive. I do not mean we successfully harvested everything we grew, sorry brussel sprouts!

Broccoli, Cauliflower, Brussels, Leeks, Weeds

Looking Back at Last Years Garden

Last year was our first year living in Wisconsin on Travis’s parents hobby farm. We set up five different growing areas, and hoped for the best. Unfortunately the vine plant patch (sugar pumpkins, squashes, etc) didn’t get enough sun and the soil didn’t drain well enough, so that was a dud. The zucchini patch that was untameable for my FIL the year before also gave us diddly squat. The carving pumpkin patch also decided to take a break for the year. We did have some success though!

For one, we had cucumbers coming out of our eyeballs. There were days when each one of us (5 in total) took a whole bag to work to give away, and yet we still had more at home. We’ll be scaling back a bit on cucumbers this year. Our green beans did pretty well, although they eventually seemed to have gotten taken over by the cucumbers. Broccoli did great, and we enjoyed the “broccolini-esqe” offshoots throughout the summer. Cauliflower did well, but seemed more prone to bugs. The tomatoes were frustrating- huge bushy monster plants that wouldn’t ripen properly, and that I had no control over. Not this year, tomatoes!

Raised Garden Beds

Based on last years frustrations and successes, we’ve remapped our garden and planting plan. First things first, we had to move our planter boxes. We built these at our first house in Saint Paul, and brought them with us here to possibly use as flower boxes. We used them for food garden planting instead, and will be using them mostly for food again.

Last year they held bell peppers, strawberries, jalapenos, chile peppers, and two varieties of cherry tomatoes. The tomatoes did pretty well, as did the hot peppers. We got a handful of strawberries; the deer got a few too. Absolutely no bell peppers grew though. Overall, nothing in our boxes got enough sun to flourish. We moved the beds to the other side of where our main plot is, and we’re fencing them in with everything else.

This year the raised beds will house root veggies (carrots, radishes, beets, onions), nightshades (eggplants, bell peppers), greens (spinach, salad bowl, little gem), flowers (pollinator variety), and possibly mint in its own box.

LJ helping me pull weeds and turn the soil over for planting

Garden Plots

Inside the fence opposite of the raised beds we’ll have yellow and green summer squash growing on our old bed frame headboard. On the chainlink fence we’ll have cucumbers and green beans- they did SO WELL there last year. In front of that will be a whole plot of broccoli (we’re skipping the cauliflower this year.) Further over will be our six different varieties of tomatoes. Then in the back corner we’re hoping for one or two tomatillo plants that maybe reseeded themselves from last year.

Container plants

We’re not stopping there though. Sprinkled throughout the garden are varying sized containers for more plants. Two will definitely have jalapenos if we can get our seeds to be successful (or if we can buy plants at a plant sale.) Two have last years strawberries growing that I transplanted. A handful will have flowers and maybe some herbs. I usually like to keep my herb container garden on the deck though, so I see them (and use them) more often.

On to the Field

We don’t have any livestock right now, and aren’t planning to get any for a few more years. The Truhler boys all raised llamas growing up, and in a few years we’d like to get a couple llamas, goats, and chickens. Until then, we’re going to make use of the empty barn field and plant watermelon, cantelope, sugar pumpkins, jack-o-lantern pumpkins, spaghetti squash, butternut squash, and corn there. Hopefully the sunny spot and space to spread their vines will result in good production.

Starting seeds

I am a lazy gardener. I don’t exactly love finicky plants, and I prefer hardy things that can handle the wacky midwest weather easily. However, it is exponentially more affordable to start your own seeds indoors, so we do our best every year. I feel like the plants we start from seeds and eventually transplant are usually pretty hardy, mainly from my neglect and abuse. If they can’t handle me, they can’t handle a Wisconsin spring and summer.

This year we bought a lot of seeds. I did research on all of them, and marked up a calendar of plant dates, hardening dates, and transplant dates. We used one of those 50 plant seedling trays that are cheap from a big box garden store (I don’t recommend) and placed the seedlings in the office window. It’s south facing, and all of our sun loving indoor plants thrive there.

I check on them almost every day, water them when they seem sad or dry, and turn a heat mat on underneath if they feel chilly. That sounds like I take great care of them, but honestly they looked very sad after about 5 weeks. Everything sprouted, so that was nice. Not everything survived. Tomatoes and bell peppers were the hardiest. A few eggplants are holding out hope. The jalapenos, broccoli, salad greens, and some of the tomatoes were sacrificed. The ones that survived were transplanted into larger individual pots to wait out the rest of our cold spring. I mainly needed to bury the leggy tomatoes to encourage better root growth.

Using What We’ve Got

While the stay at home order is in place, and while we’re down an income, we decided to try to find/reuse/get creative with putting our garden together. A huge benefit of living on a hobby farm is the stuff we’ve got sitting around. The chainlink fence is part of an old dog kennel. The bed frame is our old one that we couldn’t get to stop squeaking after we moved. The screen door was a christmas-at-the-curb my MIL found a few years ago and insisted would get used. The metal fencing is leftover from enclosing the barnyard. Other than our seeds and some soil, we haven’t bought anything new. If you don’t have random stuff lying around, you could check a free facebook group in your area, or join a Buy Nothing group. As a bonus, sometimes people like to giveaway or swap the plants they don’t have space for.

We cut all of the fence posts out of this snowmobile fencing from a few years ago

What’s Next

Travis and Sam got all of the posts and the screen door to the garden in last weekend. This weekend I think we’ll be able to get the fence up. I planted all of the root veggies and greens. I think I might put chicken wire over the raised beds until they start sprouting to keep the birds from getting my seeds. We need to continue to lay down the paths. Most of the garden will have hay paths with cardboard underneath. The hay is spoiled and sitting in the barn from the last llamas a few years ago, so its good to use it up. We have a woodchipper, and if we can get it to work, I’d like to use wood chips in the middle of the garden underneath a little bench to sit on. My flower buckets need dirt. The tomato stakes need to be put in. Everything needs to be watered. The work and the joy never end. UPDATE: we got a lot of these chores done.. read about them here!

Thanks for reading! If you’ve got a garden, what are you growing?