Reflecting on Previous Versions of our Veggie Garden

I love any excuse to use an idiom, and today I get to use one of my favorites: Rome wasn’t built in a day! Let’s chat a little bit about starting small, managing expectations, and not biting off more than you can chew when it comes to starting anything new, especially something that can seem totally overwhelming — vegetable gardening!

Do you have visions of hundreds of square feet, or even acres of vegetable beds? Do you pine over luxe kitchen gardens on Pinterest? Do you find yourself ogling overflowing vegetable beds and trellises? Because I did for years before having an outdoor space, and still do.

I’ve lived in various apartments in Boston, San Francisco, and Brooklyn, and despite having rooftop space in SF, never got into gardening until moving to Santa Monica in the spring of 2016. I had grand plans of rooftop gardening in San Francisco and reviving a dormant rose bed, but it was 2010, I had just graduated in 2009 in the worst economy of recent history and had heaping student loan bills. A girl could dream of gardening, but a girl also had close to zero discretionary spending at that point. Could I have grown an herb garden? Sure, but it didn’t happen.

So, giddy with this blank canvas of a patio (well, it’s really the end of a long driveway), I started dreaming again. I don’t have a full photo of the empty space, but you get the hint.

I don’t have a comparison photo of the area up above yet, but will post something once I plant some flowers in the raised bed I put in. The soil in this particular area was a sandy dust bowl, and while some plants were growing, the area hadn’t been tended to in years and was in dire need of an overhaul. Since then, we’ve put down river rocks, planted succulents and a few philodendrons, and have a bed growing some Swiss chard that will soon be home to sweet autumn clematis and climbing hydrangea, and a few other shade-tolerant perennials.

So while I was busy dreaming of a thriving edible oasis, do you know what we did? Built one single 3’x5′ raised bed and put it in a sunny part of the yard. Then, after getting soil recommendations from a new farmer friend who I met while out surfing one day, drove to a local nursery to stock up on compost, peat moss, and something else that I honestly can’t recall. Bottom line, I had no idea what I was doing! My farmer friend gave me some kale starter plants, and the rest I got at another local nursery. See how closely I planted things? I blatantly disregarded, or didn’t notice, planting distance requirements. Only the kale thrived, and we feasted on those leafy greens for almost a full year! I learned a very important lesson that growing season. Plants, much like people, need personal space to thrive.

Armed with our learnings, and feeling up for the challenge of a few more raised beds, we (actually, Kristian!) painstakingly disassembled that first bed, repurposed the wood elsewhere, and built four 4’x4′ raised beds using the Square Foot Gardening method. The SFG gurus say that you only need beds to be roughly 6″ high, and while that might be true if you build them on top of existing soil. we discovered that while we got lots of veggies from this set up, the plants’ root systems didn’t have enough personal space.

Also, because we garden on top of cement which is not ideal, we may have been dealing with some heat retention issues because had the beds lifted up off the ground a bit. This was to make it easier to access for harvesting, but introduced potential new issues.

And that brings us to Version 3.0 of the garden in our rental bungalow! We (again, Kristian!) built the beds up from 6″ to 24″, dropped them off the cement blocks, and planted our cool season crops. We planted them about a month after we initially planned, and learned that the far right of this picture (south) doesn’t get as much sun in the winter, which meant that those two beds lagged behind a bit. Again, learnings! That’s the theme of all of this. You make plans, try things, see what works, what doesn’t, what improvements you can make, and keep trudging along. There is no perfection when it comes to gardening. It’s fun, delicious, gorgeous learning.

Just this past weekend, we added those two half wine barrels to the garden, which will be home to turmeric and ginger and possibly sweet potatoes or asparagus. Jury’s still out on that, but I’m excited to have a bit more growing space. We also made use of those cement blocks which previously propped up our Version 2.0 beds, and built a little herb and flower area in a previously bland, beige, empty spot of the yard/driveway. There we have some nasturtiums, calendula, basil, sage, chives, dill, and coreopsis. I think. I get a little seed happy and sometimes forget what I plant where, so it’ll be a surprise for all parties involved! And for Version 4.0 of the garden….

We’ll be adding beds along that empty patch of wall, and along the length of yard in front of the ficus tree hedge, for a grand total of 60 square feet (doubling our existing space), and we’ll also be installing trellises the entire length of the beds, forming a privacy screen. On that, I’ll be training a passion fruit vine that we planted over the weekend, along with cucumbers, tomatoes, beans, peas, and watermelons this summer.

Are we crazy for putting in so much work on a place that we rent? Maybe, in the eyes of some people. But we are fortunate enough to have a rent controlled stand-alone bungalow in a coveted area of Santa Monica, a mile from the beach. Our landlord is a wonderful guy and has said multiple times how much he loves what we’re doing with the garden and how tranquil it is. Will it be a pain to move everything when we eventually move? Absolutely. This is some high quality soil we’re working with and I have every intention of bringing it with us, come hell or high water. But I also don’t want to be so focused on the idea of moving someday that I miss the here and now, and present Amy and Kristian want to have a vegetable garden. No one knows what the future holds, so we’re making hay while the sun shines. See? Told you I love idioms.

If you have a rental and are holding off on trying your hand at gardening, I’d encourage you to go on and give it a whirl! Start small, and have fun. There is a great gardening community on Instagram, and everyone is so encouraging and forthcoming with advice and tips. Ask away, and please take photos of your garden. A pot of basil in the kitchen, maybe a tomato plant on your patio. Once you have a taste of home-grown, you’ll be hooked.