Due to the *tumultuous* state of the United States this year, and a recent dock workers strike that had us all fearing that we were going to see shortages at the grocery store, I am finally pursuing my dream of starting a high-yield vegetable garden in my backyard. I'm calling it a vegetable garden for the time being despite the fact that I want to turn it into a full food forest in the future. Right now, I'd like to maintain some play space for the kids, so I have to keep it limited to a smaller space. This document will serve a journal of sorts to log my efforts in the garden, and the steps I'm taking to make this dream a reality. ### March 2025 - Built a dual-bin composting tumbler and began to compost leaves, old dead house plants, and kitchen scraps from veggies/fruits/eggshells. - Ordered a two pack of 6x3x2 metal galvanized garden beds. **Total spend: $40** - Ordered 2 pounds of gold seed potatoes to chit, a pack of 500 Hybrid Napoli Carrot seeds, a pack of 250 Savanna Spinach mustard hybrid seeds, and a pack of 250 sugar snap pea seeds. **Total spend: 40$** - Purchased a cheap yard cart, seed starter, 25 count seed packet of beefsteak tomatoes and 8 seed potatoes from Lowes. Want to try the big box store stuff to see how it does compared to the online seed store I used. **Total Spend: $90** - Picked up 5 14-gallon containers at the local garden center and planted Lowes potatoes in 2 of them with some mushroom compost I also bought at the garden center. **Total Spend: $50** - Made a mini greenhouse out of an old clear tupperware and seeded 9 beefsteak tomato seeds in globs of aloe from our aloe plant. May have overwatered here and drowned the seeds already, but fingers crossed I get something to sprout. - 03/30/25: Potatoes and tomatoes have sprouted and are doing quite well. Planted basil, marigolds, and zinnia today in containers on the deck. Tomorrow I get my compost for the beds delivered. ### July 2025 I haven't been updating this journal as much as I wanted, but I've learned so much in the last few months. Here are some highlights: - We managed to harvest 4 containers of potatoes and ended up with probably 15 pounds of potatoes, which is awesome! This has been our only successful harvest. - We replanted 2 potato containers and one of them had our homemade compost. The growth on that one has been explosive, the other one didn't end up sprouting. - Our tomatoes, peas, carrots, and spinach nearly died during the transplant to the beds, but using poles and greenhouse tarp we regulated the temperature and watering. This saved the spinach and tomatoes, and they've slowly recovered. The peas and carrots didn't make it. - Composting is going really well! it doesn't stink, it speeds up growing so much, and it helps us keep some food out of our trash. - I need to build a compost bin for depositing our pile and what comes out of our tumbler. - My parents gave us 3 containers with about 3 tomato plants in each. They wilted very quickly, and I tried to save them, but they quickly developed blossom end rot (BER). Some turned a beautiful red color, but I'm not sure if any of them will be harvestable. We're ready to compost them. Learning here was that you shouldn't overplant in containers if you aren't pruning, and that you need to keep the soil consistently nutritious for the plants to continue to thrive. We took this learning back to our original tomatoes, and I've been regularly top dressing their roots with fresh compost. It's made a hug difference. I'll try and keep up with this better, and I'll upload some pictures soon of the setup so far, and the potato harvest. ### November 2025 Alright, I lied, I never kept up to date with this. However, our first season of growing vegetables just ended, as the temperatures are dropping, so I figured I'd share learnings and results here. ##### What Did We Grow? This season we attempted to grow the following: - Beefsteak and Roma Tomatoes - Golden Potatoes - Sugar Snap Peas - Mustard Spinach - Strawberries - Napoli Carrots And here is what we harvested: 8 seed potatoes became about **30 potatoes** in containers 5 tomato seedlings yielded **40 Tomatoes** **0 Sugar Snap Peas** **1 Carrot** **0 Strawberries** **A LOT of spinach** (I lost track) ##### What Happened and What did We Learn I'm going to go veggie by veggie: **Potatoes** These were easy as all getout. I think the only things I really learned were the value of a container setup (as opposed to a bed) and that you can probably leave your potatoes in just a little longer. Our potatoes were all pretty small, but I made a mistake and left them in the shade a little too long at one point. This lead to wilting, so we harvested a little early. I don't regret it, but growing in containers lets you move things, so next time, they're staying in the sun. **Tomatoes** These were the opposite of potatoes. By far the hardest to grow (not counting the veggies I straight up didn't treat well that never stood a chance). Tomatoes are temperamental. I assumed, since it seems like everyone grows them, that it would be easy. It's **not**. I babied these things, from seedlings to beds. They seemed to take twice as long as advertised to grow, and when they finally did, I killed a few bushes due to nutrient deficiency and sun damage. The ones I did manage to keep alive were in the beds (the ones I killed were in containers) and they took AGES to fruit (fruit?). When they did, the **damn** hornworms appeared, and ate through anything that turned red. This is when I learned the valuable lesson of picking tomatoes at the breaker stage (when they are just beginning to turn color) and ripen them inside on the counter. They aren't as juicy this way, but they are still way better than store bought, and they don't have worms in them, so I can live with the trade off. Once we figured this out, I took back my oath that I would never grow tomatoes again. **Sugar Snap Peas** I tried growing these directly from seed, and despite shooting up quickly as seedlings, I believe that they were majorly overwatered and shaded during a month long rain spree we had this season. I think they would have done fine if I covered my beds earlier, but after they died is when I decided to place a tarp tube over my beds (until the tomatoes outgrew them in one bed). I'll try these again next year. **Carrots** I thought these all died the same way my sugar snap peas did, and then after a few weeks of disappearance, one of these managed to come back! It grew pretty large, and I was pretty pumped I grew at least one root! I just planted more of these for the cooler season. **Spinach** By far my best producer. Pests went crazy on these, and I still managed to get probably 100 leaves harvested that bigger than my whole head. I didn't even know spinach could grow that big. We gave it to friends, froze some into ice cubes for smoothies, and snuck some in to the kids food for extra protein. I'll absolutely keep doing spinach in future seasons. #### Other Learnings This season I set up automated watering, but it was hooked up to our water main in the house, so it was hard water. It still did wonders in the beds, but next season I want to hook it up to the rain barrel. Speaking of the rain barrel, we collected a **ton** of water. Between this and composting, I felt like I did more than just grow some food. I made sustainable choices that I want to double down on in the future. I also learned natural ways to manage pests. I used neem oil and coverings to try and mitigate, as well as plant pairings that could help. For a while we had frogs living in the shade of our spinach, and they were **huge** helpers. I'm going to write more soon about our next season, as we've already planted, but I forgot I have to manually water right now since our outside water is shut off for the cold. I'm going to go do that, and I'll continue to keep at least semi-annually updated.