Year One of Vegetable and flower garden

Our yard- oh boy what a project. We knew that we wanted some land when we were looking for this house. We were tired of being packed in like sardines and I wanted a backyard where I could go hang out and not have people watching me. Our current house is on about an acre and half of land including a secluded back yard. When we bought it I knew it would be HUGE project to get it to where we eventually want it to be- so I figured I would start documenting year by year. 

So to give you an idea of what we started with- our backyard was basically abandoned for the past decade- or at least thats what I'm assuming. You could tell that sometimes the previous owners would attempt to clear some and they literally just left large piles of sticks where they fell. They also used it as their trash pit-which is really obnoxious. Seriously you would not believe what we have found in our backyard so far! Tires, pipes, tennis balls, extension cords, etc. Our biggest issue is that most of the area is overgrown with extremely sharp and prickly raspberry bushes. We found we need special gloves just to even touch these things and they are very hard to kill. 

So in the fall of 2021 and all of 2022 we worked on clearing the area little by little. We have yard waste pick up that we pay for through our trash company so we would fill the bin every other week and slowly get rid of waste that way. We did have a day where our neighbor came over and helped us clear a big section and took all of it to the dump. At this point though our yard wasn't a huge priority to us because we were very focused on finishing the house and learning how to become parents. 

Spring of 2023 we decided we were going to focus more on our yard and start actively planting 

Phase 1:  Brick laying and raised bed building Spring 2023 

One thing that we got SUPER lucky with is that we found an entire pallet of bricks while we were clearing our back yard over the winter. This easily saved us hundreds of dollars and many trips to Home Depot. We took all the bricks from the backyard and used them to edge out part of our front yard, our side yard and our backyard gardens. 

Front and side yard edging 

Backyard edging 

For the future flower garden directly in front of our house we used pavers that were a bit fancier. These I also ended up getting for free. I got them back in 2021 (when I was 5 weeks pregnant and my husband was super upset with me that I moved all of these by myself). I am apart of a local "buy nothing" site and someone was moving and had never used them and was giving them away. I will fully admit these totally just sat on the side of our house for over a year until we made an effort to lay them out but I love the look of them! 

On the other side of our house is where we get the best sun and we decided would be best for our veggie garden. Because they soil is so rocky here in the PNW we decided to build raised beds. We originally built two but then talked about everything we wanted to plant and decided to build two more. We've grown veggies in raised beds before and really like it because it helps keep the weeds under control and keeps the bunnies out. 

Phase 2: Dirt Laying and Planting Summer 2023 

We bought A TON of dirt. We got a compost mix to fill the raised beds and to add to all of our future flower gardens. The natural soil here in the PNW is not that nutritious and is extremely rocky and we wanted to give our future plants a good chance at a healthy life. We also used our compost that we started two year ago but it wasn't nearly enough to fill everything we needed. Still we continue to compost and plan on adding it to our raised beds every year for more nutrients. 

You can see too in the pictures that we also added a permanent clothes line in our backyard- love me some sun dried cloth diapers and clothes! 

We did go to a nicer plant nursery and got a few "core" or focal plants. We got a maple leaf hydrangea, a pee-gee hydrangea and a fire and ice hydrangea (can you tell what I like :) ) I purposely didn't buy too many plants this summer because I am planning on planting this area slowly and over time. It would be easy to spend  bunch of money and fill this with plants quickly but we just did a kitchen remodel this year and really didn't have that much money to spend. I purposely try to get plants that proliferate well and that after a year or so I can divide them and plant them elsewhere in the garden to slowly fill in the space over time. 

In our veggie garden we did asparagus and strawberries in one bed, corn and lettuce in another, tomatoes and then bell peppers and zucchini in the last one. Except for the asparagus/strawberry one we plan on mixing them up each year and adding nutrients to the soil in between. 

We mulched minimally this year- because we spent so much money on soil. We are planning to fully mulch everything next year when we have more plants in place. We did buy individual bags of mulch and put them around the bigger purchase plants to help protect them. 

Phase 3: More planting Fall 2023

So I actually try to wait until fall to buy perennials instead of buying them in spring or summer. Often in late September the stores will start to run sales and discounts on their plants to get rid of them and thats typically when I buy them. This year I bought a fair amount and tried to plant them quickly to get some good root establishment before it got too cold. 

Front Yard

Backyard 

Side Yards 

 This is our very backyard- I wish I would've thought to take a before picture but everything in this picture was covered with raspberry bushes that we have cleared over the last year and half 

What did we learn? 

Well we basically learned that the deer eat everything. This was extremely disappointing. Basically they ate basically all of our veggies and most of our shrubs. Next spring we are planning on building cages around our plants to allow them to grow without being eaten by deer. We have a family of deer that live in our neighborhood and they have become particularly fearless this year. We tried liquid fence for a bit but this maybe slightly deterred them but did not stop them.We were bummed but you live and learn. I've also been trying to research more plants that are "deer resistant" now that I understand the gravity of the situation.

 

 

The culprit literally standing in my flower garden