Matt Hughes i like to grow tiny trees and tinker on stuff

This year's modest vegetable garden attempt

Last spring, I got way too ambitious, and built one 4'x10' and two 4'x4' garden beds. It was our first spring living somewhere with a yard (even though we were renting), and I got excited and wanted to plant everything I could think of. It ended up being too much to keep up with (especially for a first garden), and we didn't have great luck with it.

This year, I decided to scale it back and plant 10 or 12 things instead of 25+. Time slipped up on me, and I wasn't able to build a raised bed in the backyard like I wanted. There was a bare, un-used flower bed right by the front door, though!

It took quite a bit of digging to loosen, and I had to buy a spading fork to help break up the hard red clay. I mixed in a couple of bags of soil conditioner to help keep it from getting so compacted again, and used pine bark as a mulch.

I left a bit of a pathway in the middle, so my wife and I can reach all of the plants. I just need to spread some pebbles in the pathway and set up some stones on the edges to separate it better.

Garden bed, ready for planting

Garden bed with plants laid out

Garden bed with everything planted

Garden bed with plant names

Edit - my seeds started sprouting!

Radish, carrot, and Swiss chard sprouts