The Gardening and Outdoor Entertaining Blog Hop / Why It’s Not Too Late to Start a Vegetable Garden

I am so excited to be part of The Gardening and Outdoor Entertaining Blog Hop today with six other fabulous bloggers. Our hop is sponsored by Antique Farmhouse who is one of my favorite online Farmhouse stores. Antique Farmhouse is also offering a giveaway of $500 to spend on their site so be sure to read all the way through this so you can enter!

My fellow bloggers in this hop are Jill at Gathered Grace, Janet at Shabbyfufu, Sarah at Dreaming of Homemaking, Kim and Lacey at Styled With Lace, Karan at Designs by Karan, and Kristi at The Pickled Rose. Links to all of their blogs can be found below.

My Vegetable Garden

If you asked me what single thing in our home gives me the most pleasure, I am pretty sure it is our vegetable garden. There is something about growing food from seeds or tiny plants that just makes me happy. I love tending to the garden and planting and nurturing and watching it grow. This year I hope I will have enough tomatoes to make homemade tomato sauce! How awesome is that?

I planted my garden in March. Of course, I live in Southern California and I was planting seeds and plants while most of you still had snow on the ground. Now that almost all of you are enjoying the spring weather, it’s not too late to plant a garden. Even if you just plant herbs and tomatoes you will enjoy your harvest all summer long!

Planting a Garden

The first step is finding the right location. Most vegetables need an average of six hours a day of sunlight. Most herbs need four hours of sunlight. You can plant vegetables in an existing garden bed, potted plants or a raised bed, which is what I have done. I love my raised beds as I can control the soil quality and they are a great addition to a very unsightly part of our yard!

I built these vegetable beds with my handyman. You can find all of the instructions to build raised beds in one of my earlier blog posts here.

We added a drip irrigation system (and later some additional sprinklers) which really helped my vegetables grow. I highly suggest you tap into your existing watering system as vegetables need lots of water to grow.  

Once you have the selected the space for your garden, it’s important to use really good soil. I had special vegetable garden soil delivered and it’s the smartest thing I ever did. After the first year of growing vegetables, I pulled almost everything out and added nutrients (I used Amend) back into the soil. Don’t get lazy and just plant again. Take the time to replenish the soil with some nutrients. Look how great my iceberg lettuce is growing in the raised bed pictured below.

 

I also made my own tomato cages. They were so easy to make and they have lasted for three years. They still look as good as they did the first year I made them. If you plant tomatoes (which I highly suggest you should do) then be sure to surround them with wire or wood cages as soon as you plant them. You need to have cages for successful tomato growing.

I like starting my garden with small plants. Last year I bought everything at an organic nursery and my crop was so-so. This year I bought all of my starter plants at Home Depot and they look fabulous. Go figure. 

Just be sure to grow herbs and vegetables that you like and will use. My motto is, if you don’t like it, don’t grow it.

Antique Farmhouse

I wanted to share with you some of my favorite garden/outdoor items from Antique Farmhouse. I love this Metal Farmhouse Garden Basket. I need this to carry all of my “harvest” into the house!

This Grand Metal Candle Chandelier would look fabulous hanging from one of our trees! How awesome is this for outdoor dining?

This Round Metal Pan with Dividers would make a perfect herb Garden! Imagine how great this would look filled with basil, parsley, rosemary, and sage!

My Crop

I wanted to share some recent photos of my raised vegetable beds. I have fruit and vegetables now growing on every single plant!

I am growing eight different types of tomatoes.

And I already have two artichokes!

  

Giveaway

As I mentioned earlier, Antique Farmhouse is hosting a $500 giveaway. Imagine all of the great stuff you could buy on their website with $500! To enter, all you have to do is follow all of our blogs and follow Antique Farmhouse on Instagram. You can follow our blogs all at once using this easy tool:

a Rafflecopter giveaway
 

Hop on the Blog Hop

Now it is time to head on over to see my fellow bloggers and their amazing blog posts that are part of this blog hop. You are going to love their posts!