What's Growing in the Garden?

After months of improvements to the backyard and the front yard, we started our home garden. The backyard was out of control with weeds, uneven dirt, and spiders. There were also lots of old buckets, planter pots, and old tools. It can be pretty tricky throwing items away without first examining if it is recyclable or seeing if anyone else in the household has an emotional attachment to those items. Josh and I took care of the weeding and clearing of spiders first. Then, we had to deal with flattening the ground with a tamper. This went on for about two weeks. It was fun, but I would definitely recommend sunscreen, an umbrella or shade cloth, and taking plenty of breaks. The reward is a flat and clean landscape ready for gardening. As part of the clean-up and remodel, we added a brick flower bed and bought a galvanized planter and various planter pots. We already had a lemon tree and mango tree growing that we had to be careful with too. Currently, the main fixes that are needed are replacing the old fence, re-mulching, and shading the backyard.

In the garden, we started growing green basil, black basil, and lemon basil. We use basil in abundance for pesto and cocktails. It is also essential for our mulberry basil kombucha. As it got hotter, the basil struggled in the sun, so we had to start growing it in shaded areas. We started growing thyme and lavender; they are both in the shade and growing happily. We also have spearmint growing and lemongrass. A major crop we grew was tomatoes. I grew many of them this time, but the yield was not as great. I had them crowded in some areas, and we experienced a bad heatwave that burned some of our tomatoes. The bottoms of the tomatoes got affected, and we had to discard them. Another major crop that we started growing was eggplant. We had an old eggplant that we had to remove, but afterward, we were blessed with another healthier eggplant. We also continued to maintain our mulberry tree, which we grew from a mulberry tree branch from a local park. We also had a small yield of blueberries, boysenberries, and cherries. We had a wonderful carrot yield and recorded it on our Instagram (@hi2kombucha). Unfortunately, we did have times when plants did not make it. We tried to grow strawberries, but it was too late and too hot for them to grow in our area (Zone 10a). We also grew lantana flowers which did great at first, but when we transplanted plants, they did not make it. We plan on trying again!

As for the front yard, we had to remove our lawn and also amend the soil plus flatten it with the tamper. We had a major gopher problem which left our dirt very uneven. This was a more difficult task, seeing how the front yard is very wide. Unfortunately, we had many incidents where other people’s dogs or pets and random people roamed through and tainted the plants, so we had to improve the front yard. It took months to do the clean-up. The project is still being worked on as we speak. We did add a cactus to the fun, which we will share more of soon. We are excited to start sharing the journey and stories with you!