I am starting both a vegetable garden and a succulent plant garden. I started my succulent plant garden earlier this year. I hated the yucky stuff in the front of the house, and my lawn is separated from the planter by a lot of brick, something I can’t just pull out myself. So I’m stuck trying to make it look pretty, be environmentally friendly and mommy friendly. I like gardening but I don’t have the time to water, weed, mulch and just fiddle with. My daughter enjoys gardening with me, any excuse to get dirty and play with new stuff is fun for her. So it’s a great experience for the both of us, but I still need it mommy friendly. I planted in jasmine (actually my husband and son did it for me for Mother’s Day), some orange flower thing that attracts butterflies but is drought resistant, blue prickly things and a green cirlce on red stem plant. I also threw in some pumpkin seeds as an experiment. So what I have is a garden that I’m slowly working on but no actual plan.
With my vegetable garden I want to start different then I did the front. I want an actual plan with vegetables my family will eat and that are easy to can and are still appetizing. Some of the vegetables I have found are, zucchini, cucumber, strawberries, bell peppers, lettuce, carrots, and potatoes. The area I have for this garden I think will hold all of this; I’m just not sure if these are going to be easy enough to work on or not. There is also the watering issue. I don’t always find time to go out and water my lawn and plants. My sprinklers have been devastated by gophers and no longer work. Seeing as I have yet to find a way to get rid of the gophers I don’t want to install a new system yet. I also can have a permanent above group system because of the dog. She’s still teething and enjoys chewing on everything I have asked her not to.
I was seriously looking into a rain barrel, not exactly how well it would work in the hot desert of California but I still wanted to try. In my research I have found that you can’t use rain water for your vegetable garden because of the poisons in the roofing material. There I go trying to be environmentally friendly and I find out my house is poison! I will still make my own rain barrel but I will be using it on my yard and my front garden.
Here are some links to making your own rain barrel. This one is my favorite so far. The instructions are so clear and easy to understand. Then there is the sand filteration system. Looks hard but I will be trying it later this year. Maybe I can still use on my vegetable garden. This site has a couple of different ideas that look very useful and easy to make. Last but not least you can’t forget the compost. I have decided against buying one and instead just have a heap in my backyard. So far it’s not attracting bugs, rodents or the dog. When it does I will look into building my own.
Here is my garden, as you can see I’m still working on it.
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