Vegetable Gardening & Compost Project

This past Saturday was absolutely gorgeous here in Dallas! I’ve always wanted to try my hand at vegetable gardening, so the wonderful weather we had on Saturday was the perfect excuse to get my hands in the dirt. I shopped around at Calloway’s Nursery and Home Depot to buy my plants, seeds, dirt and get all of my tools in order. (I found that while a lot pricier, Calloway’s had much better quality soil and compost available for purchase, but Home Depot had a lot more variety of vegetables and herbs to plant). And because I’ve been burning through so much organic produce lately due to the fabulous Urban Acres Organic Co-Op, we decided to make good use of all those scraps and build a compost bed in the back.

It was quite a productive weekend. I’m really hoping that this weekend’s hard labor will bud with tasty life over the next few months. If there are any quite contrary Marys out there who can help my garden grow – I am open to all the tips, tricks, and advice I can get.

I planted a whole bed of herbs that I can’t wait to incorporate in to my cooking. Basil, sage, lemon thyme, garlic chives, onion chives, and rosemary.

For the vegetables, I planted sweet Texas onions, a few spinach plants, one broccoli plant, and one cauliflower plant. (I’m really curious to see how we cultivate that…). Then I planted a handful of carrot seeds at one end and a bag of sweet peas at the other end by the trellis. Fingers crossed! I’ve never planted anything from seedlings before, and I’ve been known to kill house plants in no time, so I really hope these sprout up!

I did a lot of research before I began the composting project. I found this blog to be the most helpful in deciding how to prepare. There are a lot of useful compost bins which you can buy now that make this very easy and mess free, for just about $100. (I almost bought this lovely black bin when I was at Home Depot). But the fact that we used all recycled wood and materials to build this compost pile makes me that much more proud of myself for starting this project.

Basically what you’ll want to do is create a bed on the bare dirt about 6-7 ft wide an 3 ft tall with a divider in the middle so you have two even bins to work with. Fill one side with the proper brown to green ratio of material and you’re on your way to composting. The reason you want two bins next to each other is because about once a month you’ll want to completely turn your pile from one side to the other, turning you compost inside out to aerate and further the composting process.