It's garden season! I'm so happy that spring is around the corner and I can start thinking about gardening and landscaping this year. We've got a baby on the way in July (see our gender reveal here!) and have some big house project goals to accomplish before baby arrives! One of my big focuses is our home's exterior...we pushed a few projects last year that didn't make the cut, so I've been wanting to get them done for a while now. This includes: replacing our roof eaves, removing an iron column and replacing with a wood column, painting the exterior of the house, and finally adding landscaping!
Last year, we worked on removing a lot of old and overgrown landscaping and adding a few small touches, but nothing major. Outside of that, my backyard garden was my big project last year.
Here's a look at a few of my garden posts from last year:
All of last year, I wanted to add pea gravel, but I kept prioritizing other things and I think Adam wasn't sold on it and was hoping that I would move on and forget about it altogether. Well, I didn't ;) So this year, my first outdoor project was *pea gravel.* Let me tell you...it's painful to spend money on rocks. UGH. But they make a huge difference in how the garden looks! I'm in love!
After our last freeze in Dallas, I cleared out the garden beds and removed all of the dead plants that had frozen. It was such a chore, but I knew I had to get it done before I could add my pea gravel and even think about planting the new garden this year.
I have two raised beds, about 6' x 3' each, connected with a large wire trellis. Last year I planted Kentucky pole beans on one side of the trellis and vining tomatoes on the other side of the trellis. I was so proud of myself and thought it would just be the cutest thing to go harvest beans and tomatoes from the trellis...well, it wasn't. It was a mess! The tomatoes were way over-planted (oops!) and didn't want to attach to the trellis on their own, so I was constantly trying to tie them up. The beans grew fast and were pretty, but we didn't really enjoy eating them, so we stopped harvesting them. So we had a ton of beans hanging and getting crisp in the Texas sun!
Ha! Rookie gardener mistakes for sure. I wayyy over-planted last year and things got crazy! If you followed along last year, you probably remember that we had so many zucchinis! That was definitely my favorite vegetable that we grew. I also planted a lot of flowers and they started to take over the garden! Another rookie mistake.
My LEAST favorites last year:
- carrots
- marigolds (attracted so many wasps...don't even know how but I was not pleased!)
- giant sunflowers (loved them, but not for inside the garden!)
- onions (meh)
- lettuce (didn't do great in the heat)
- spinach (didn't do great in the heat)
Honestly everything was so overcrowded last year, that I'm not sure if I really gave those veggies a fair shot, but I'm moving on!
I knew that I wanted to keep things very simple this year. I'm planing the rest of my flower seeds from last year in landscape beds in the front and backyard. I'll wait to start those until after the house gets painted so they don't get trampled while seedlings.
In the raised garden beds, here's what I ended up planting:
Bed One:
- 2 zucchiini plants
- 1 basil
- 1 lavender
- 1 rosemary
- boston ivy along the trellis (from seed)
Bed Two:
- 2 assorted cherry tomato plants (in a tomato cage)
- 1 red bell pepper
- 1 green bell pepper
- boston ivy along the trellis (from seed)
They look a little sad and empty now but not for long! I didn't start anything from seed this year except for the boston ivy because I already had them on hand and I couldn't find small ivy plants to transplant. Boston ivy is evergreen and a fast grower, so I'm hoping it eventually covers the whole trellis and looks nice year-round.
In my flower beds in the backyard, I'll plant most of my remaining seeds from last year...dahlias, zinnias, sunflowers, and quite a few more! Our bees will love it!