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.