Garden Planning | Southern Bed

I am getting excited for this year's garden. Now that we live on a 1/4 acre lot, we are finally going to have space to grow more. So now the tricky part is trying to plan it all, so we get a good yield without over extending myself now that we have the space for me to easily do so. I have already started my sweet peppers and hot peppers, and have also started my tomato plants. My current set up is that I have two 8'x4' raised beds, as well as all the pots on the patio. I have three fruit trees that I planted in the lawn. Just this past few days I have begun to pepper some more areas for planting.

Southern Bed
The first one being a bed all along the south side of the house. My plan for this one so far is to plant a row of peas up against the house, and build some 4' tall supports for them to climb. And start rows of lettuce, radishes and carrots and perhaps some cilantro and an area of spinach. My thoughts are that this bed will be warmer than the rest of the garden, as it will get the reflected light from the house, and will get sun for most of the day, so I will be able to get a few extra days/week ahead due to the microclimate there. Then once we are definitely past the threat of any freezes, I will hopefully plant the 8 sweet pepper plants that I sowed under my lights in this garden. As I figure that they will love to soak up the heat. One thing I plan on trying this year other than in my raised beds, is a living mulch. So I will also plant some watermelon and melon here and let the vines creep around my pepper plants.

I also plan on constructing a trellis to place on the south side of my air conditioning unit (which is located at the easet end of the southern bed) and have either cucumbers or pole beans grow on it. The reason I am planning on doing this, is to help keep our cooling costs down. If you have an air conditioner, shading the unit can increase its efficiency by as much as 10%.

Pikey Lot

Today I walked the dogs over to the Pikey lot to take a look at where I had sowed some watermelon, winter squash and pumpkin seeds. I wasn't really expecting much, but to my surprise 8 little seedlings have sprouted up. I am excited to see what they are, as I can't remember which I planted exactly where.

Watermelon

Last Thursday night we opened up the watermelon we harvested early in the week (the 18.8 pounder). It was delicious, and smelled so strongly of sweet watermelon, that both our kids couldn't help themselves and started digging in and eating the watermelon too.

Watermelon Harvest

Today we finally harvested the Watermelon 'Moon & Stars' that was growing huge on the berm. The plant was grown from seeds that my friend Andrew gave me for my birthday (from seeds he saved from a watermelon he had purchased at a farmer's market). We would look at it every time we sat down to eat in the dining room. We weighed it, we couldn't use the kitchen scale, that came up with an error, so we used our Wii Fit. The one watermelon weighed in at 18.8 lbs! (Outweighing our daughter Julia Belén!) We have one more little one growing still up on the berm, hopefully that one keeps growing too.

Thanks Andrew.