Our patio veggie garden is growing

30 days

                                                                       Our garden on day 1 in the trough

Our galvanized feed trough gardens are growing. Most prominent are the tomatoes, peppers and onions. The grapes are just starting to grow and the cilantro, which looked dead for a week, is now looking quite healthy. We think Violet ate a tomato yesterday....little thief! The strawberries are flowering. The left trough has some infant grapes, blueberries and other seedlings that will take a while to get big. It's fun to watch stuff grow outside my window.

Our new edible garden!

Matt and I have have been wanting to start an edible garden for years. We would always talk about it, but could never commit to a spot in the yard, what to grow, how to start, etc. We were easily defeated by the daunting task of creating a thriving garden.

With the addition of our back patio cover, we now have a lovely spot that gets about 5 hours of morning sun, but skirts the harsh afternoon sun. We also have access to drip irrigation on the edge of the patio and the area gets a light sprinkling from the lawn.


While I wanted HUGE containers for our edible garden, the biggest, most economical solution for our containers were horse feed troughs. We got referred to Tempe Feed and Tack and they had 4 x 2 x 1 galvanized steel troughs for $115/each.

We got the troughs home, set them up on the patio and began to prepare them for the garden. We drilled several 1/4" holes in the bottom of the troughs. Then, we lined the bottom of the troughs with weed paper, which will allow water to drain, but not the soil. We also lined the interior of the trough with plastic sheeting, to prevent leaching of the metal into the soil. We filled each trough with 3 big bags of soil and proceeded to transplant some of our seedlings and plants into the troughs.

We are growing tomatoes, zucchini, red onions, green onions, cilantro, red grapes, strawberries, blueberries, basil, jalapenos, sage, leek, sweet peppers, cucumber, cantaloupe and eggplant.  We hope to see some success with our first edible garden. If we fail, we'll try again. Wish us luck!

Adding to the Hibbard orchard

Matt surprised me today with 2 new trees! I thought he had flowers behind his back, but he pulled out a meyer lemon tree and then a Mexican lime tree. I have grown tired of stealing my neighbors' lemons and I have yet to find a neighbor with limes, so the gifts are so appreciated! They are cute little trees and Matt got the 2 for $10 at Home Depot!

We have tomatoes, 3 types of peppers, 1 canteloupe, cilantro and basil growing.