First Plantings

So the garden boxes are in. What is the next step? 

Let's plant!

We thought we would start with something simple.

Garlic 

(note: not so simple)

We just bought some garlic heads from the store, broke them into individual cloves and planted upright into the ground. Be sure to leave as much paper on the cloves as you can.

Good job hubby!

We also purchased some items from a nursery to get our garden a leg up in the growing season. Here is an artichoke plant.

Guess you can't guess what this....Asparagus! Who knew that it was so ferny...

We love cooking with fresh herbs, so we bought alot of herbs to plant directly into the garden. Basil, parsley, thyme, sage, cilantro, mint (in it's own pot since it is a weed!), rosemary, dill, and lavender. 

In the back corner, we added a few strawberry plants as well. Yummy!

We want alot of other summer vegetables so we started the rest as seed in homemade seed pots we found on Pinterest.

Cannot wait to start eating all the yummy food we are going to make with this garden!

The design of the garden boxes was found through Pinterest. Check out the link below!

Planting containers

DIY Fountain

When we were designing the layout of the backyard, we had always envisioned guests coming into our home looking out the back French doors and their eye being drawn to our backyard to a fountain. 

The pot itself was such a find! We were looking for plants at a nursery in Laguna Beach when we happened upon a blue distressed pot. It didn't have a price tag so we asked, expecting them to say it was close to the price of the others around it. $80...$100...even $120... It is Laguna Beach after all.

"Fifteen dollars." 

"$50!" we exclaim. 

"No...$15". 

Needless to say, we took the pot home.

Once we got home, we immediately went about finding a website on how to make the fountain ourselves. Pinterest was extremely useful. See the video link that we used.

We ran an exterior power cord out from the house to the base of the fountain.

And then promptly found out they had solar powered pumps...for serious? That was a very long and deep trench that we dug! Oh well. 

The end product doesn't look too bad. It has a nice burbling noise. Very soothing.

Garden

Come March and we are thinking, we are going to have to get our butts in gear before the planting season catches up to us. 

Where to start? We have such a big blank canvas with our backyard!

Key points we wanted to hit before the seeds go into the ground: 

Separate sprinkler zone for the vegetable garden

Fencing to keep out our dogs (no one likes pee on their peas)

&

Raised planting beds

So we dug up all of the existing sprinkler pipes and replaced them with a grid work of pvc organized into the approximate planter locations. Getting the pvc into the back retained planter was tricky since we had to dig under the short retaining wall. I was all for leaving it exposed but my husband was determined. With a bit of help from our dog Bacon, he managed to do it. Good job hunny!

Next was the fencing around the garden. We used the same components and design as the dog run on the west side of the yard.

Here is a look at the finished fence (minus the door). One of the only plants we saved from the original yard is seen here in the foreground. It turned out to be a Julia Child rose bush. Bon Appetit!

All we had left was the raised beds. But more on that later...