Green Thumb Moms

First question: how old are your children? I had lovely plans for a garden in our first home and had DH build me a beautiful long box in the space between the drive and our porch. I have the most adorable pictures of my toddler children playing in the dirt in that box. A neighbor asked me what I was growing. I said Children!. Be reasonable about what you can take on and manage. Without a lot more information about your land (soil, shade rain etc) I cannot make specific suggestions. Start small, go to the hardware store/garden center and get suggestions. Don't let them sell you more than you can afford or manage. Keep a notebook about your plantings see what works and what doesn't. Try to focus on having fun with it. Good Luck!

What I did was make raised beds for gardens in a section of my yard. You basically make boxes out of boards. Mine are narrow...about 3ft by 6ft...so I can easily get to both sides and bc my yard is narrow. Anyway, you can make a series of these raised beds, fill them with garden dirt and plant veggies. Then I set up soaker hoses to run through the raised beds at the top. They are on a timer for 10m in the morning and 10m in the evening. That way I can't forget to water the gardens! We had so many veggies last summer we were giving them away - it was awesome! We have just been doing this by trial and error. The first year we did not have small animals come and eat stuff. This year the chipmunks love to eat the beans as tehy pop up. I picked up some of this garden material that lets light in but keeps animals out and nailed it over the top of that garden bed (loosely). When the plants get bigger I will loosen it more. The animals don't touch the tomatos, squash, cucumbers, watermelon and carrot greens for some reason. They are leaving the swiss chard alone too. You can build a little frame for netting around your garden and make a little net "cage" to keep animals out. As for a section of lawn where you don't know what to plant...for me it is trial and error. The people at the nursery advise me but they don't really know what direction each spot faces and what really will do well there. Each year I try some new perennial flowering shrub/flowers and each year one or two of them come back beautifully and the rest die. I figure in 5 more years it's going to look great around here! Something that is nice is to add a meandering stone path through flower gardens. Add a bird bath or even a small fountain. Our neighbors made a beautiful little rock pool with a fountain running down into it like a small waterfall.They put a small table and chairs there and it's SO nice to sit there and hang out. Birds are constantly flying over to drink and the water sounds nice.

I like to garden. Its in my blood so to speak (I have 5 generations of non-farmers that I know of that were avid gardeners).

I like raised gardens to make it easier on me and my kids. When I do raised gardens I put bricks or blocks or landscape timbers around the area I want to garden in and fill the area with compost, manure, top soil or potting soil. I use rabbit, steer (cow) or chicken manure. I don't use horse manure unless I know what the horse ate.

Why so picky about horse manure? Because the horse's digestive system is not very thorough. Weed seeds don't decompose or digest completely. So if the horse ate run of the mill hay, you get the weed seeds that are part of the hay in your garden. I found a lady that did competitive barrel racing. She bedded her horses down on cedar and pine shavings and only fed her horse oats and a special hay. It made a wonderful garden soil.

A real good book for maximizing your back yard garden is "Square foot gardening". You can go to youtube and find some real good videos on raised gardens. A good video I've been watching lately is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKrkaSf8aT4

One of the things I'd recommend for kid gardens is to have the kids plant what is interesting to them and something they like to eat. Then when it makes it to the table, you can praise their efforts and how good their produce tastes.

I make my raised beds 4 feet wide and how ever long you want. Why 4 feet wide? Because weeds are so much easier to pull out of a raised garden and my reach is just over 2 feet. I can lean over and stretch and get more, but 2 feet is easy. That way you can reach both sides of a 4 foot wide raised garden.

Good luck to you and yours.

For the vegetable garden, just decide how big, then you have to dig out all the grass and put in some garden soil. Then, plant your plants. To keep the animals out, I put a tall (4 ft) metal stake on each corner and fence it in using deer netting (you can buy stakes and deer netting a Lowes or Home Depot). You are a little late to start things that take a long time to mature like tomatoes. But you could put in herbs or lettuce - things that you eat the greenery from. If you stick some garlic into the ground, you'll have fresh garlic next fall (just use a bulb from the grocery store). You don't need a big garden, mine is about 4ft X 6 ft, and I have 3 tomatoes, 3 peppers, a lot of garlic, and cilantro growing.

For flowers and shrubs, take a look around at your neighbors, and ask them what they are growing. They can give you good tips on what grows well in your area, and what the animals won't competely eat to the ground. They also might give you some perennials next time they are thinning theirs :) Something to remember is that perennials are more greenery, and fewer flowers. Many perennials just flower once in the spring, and then are green the rest of the summer. So if you want to see flowers all summer long, you need to buy some annuals each spring. I personally layer by beds by height - bushes and tall ornamental grasses in the back, then medium and small sized perennials in front of the bushes, and then groups of the bright flowery annuals in between the perennials.

I have lots of flower gardens. The easiest is a perennial garden. If you pick the right plants, there is no maintenance.

I suggest you figure out sun requirements and then search for plants. Your library should have books on garden design if you need help.

As to a veggie garden. You need to make sure the dirt is of good quality. We composed, so my composed goes into our veggie garden and rose garden every year. We have a fenced in yard, so our only animal is a chipmunk that lives under our deck. I just put netting around my strawberries, as he leaves everything else alone---save for low tomatoes.

You have to look at it everyday, so plant whatever looks pretty in the store. If it grows, awesome.

If it doesn't grow, then you get to try again. :)
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On keeping the animals out - there are several sprays that mimic coyote urine or some other thing garden eating animals avoid. They're usually in the pesticide aisle.

And the starting - you just do. Take a shovel or a spoon or whatever and churn the dirt a little. Put in your starter vegetable plant you just purchased, water a little bit and wait. Voila - you're a gardener. :)