Transforming our Backyard

I've been dreaming of putting a vegetable garden in our backyard for...ever it seems, but the uncertainty of how long I'd be living in this rental house kept holding me back from investing in digging around in the dirt. Now that it's looking like we'll be here for at least a year, we decided to go for it (with the landlady's ok of course) and spent the months of August and September turning our backyard from this:

Into this:

It's about 100 square feet of gardening space, 6 beds total.  There's one you can't see because it's behind the a/c unit. You can see that the front bed will be for herbs (that's basil and sage) and in the upper left in the shadow there are two chard plants.

We decided to grow in the ground as it was more cost effective than building raised beds...but not exactly easier to prepare. We sure got some incredible workouts breaking up the hardened clay soil riddled with tenacious roots from our large shade tree!!

I'm looking forward to seeing what this garden will produce. On Monday I finished mixing in the compost and I seeded 4 of the 5 vegetable beds...so far there's kale, broccoli, turnips, beets, radishes, carrots, calendula and borage, chard, leaf lettuces, spinach, fava beans and peas. I've yet to plant cilantro, parsley, leeks, garlic, collard greens, and green onions. Amazing what you can pack in to such a small space!! Not to mention, we still have our plot in the community garden and on Tuesday I turned some compost into that soil. I'm still deciding what I want to do with it this season. We have so much gardening space now that I hope we get some nice harvests...and I hope I can keep up with both of them!

I've been checking on the beds multiple times a day like an eager child...and today I noticed some sprouts working their way up!! I'll post some photos next week of the garden as it should be riddled with baby veggies!

I'm telling you, when I close my eyes all I can see are visions of vegetables. Am I obsessed or what??!?