Our Suburban Vegetable Garden

It doesn’t require a lot of property or a big budget to build a garden.  Come see how we turned a small space into our suburban vegetable garden.

Two houses ago, I had a huge vegetable garden.  That desire to grow our own food has stuck with me ever since.  Even though we own less than an acre of property and had a small budget, our suburban vegetable garden is thriving.

{Post contains affiliate links, which means I make a small commission at no extra cost to you.  Read my disclosure here.}

SUBURBAN GARDEN AREA

It all started on Mother’s Day weekend.  Everything was going to be great…the weather had been getting warmer and it just HAD TO BE sunny.

Until…it wasn’t.  The day started off cold and just never warmed up.  In fact, it started to snow!

The following weekend came around and the weather turned out much better for us.  With the garden edges defined, James was able to use our front-tine rototiller to loosen up the ground.

BUILDING A GARDEN FENCE

If you’ve been around here for a little bit, you know that DIY’ing on a budget is pretty much our thing.  But when it came to a fence, I was really stuck on how we could swing this project.  You see, we have deer.  A lot of deer…for the ‘burbs.  Sometimes you’ll see them in the winter prancing down the middle of the street.  It is the strangest thing that this “born and raised in the country girl” has ever seen.

Back to the fence.  And how the deer tie into it.  Well, deer like to eat things that humans plant.  Especially {and even suburban} vegetable gardens.  So a fence was 100% essential.

We had recently switched out the house’s original storm windows for the screen inserts.  During that process, James was able to figure out which ones were no longer needed.  He had the kids move them to the curb for the garbage to pick up.  A few mornings later, I was looking out the window, while trying to come up with a solution to our fence quandary.  That’s when my mind began to come up with a {possibly} weird idea.

What if we used the discarded windows and screens as a fence?

At this point in our marriage, James is pretty used to some of my wacky ideas.  He admitted that he never saw this one coming though.  But I won him over with the price tag: we would only need to purchase some metal stakes and wood to secure these together.  In the end, we would save many hundreds of dollars.  He was now on board!

We had the perfect amount of windows, friend!  Like, the exact amount that would span the space between the back of our home and our garage.  It was completely God’s blessing!  There was even an extra screen to add a gate to both sides of our sidewalk.

GROUND PREP

We had a lot of sod, rocks, and some flowers that needed to be removed from the area.  It really was beginning to look worse, rather than better.

SUBURBAN GARDEN PLANTING

Now that the fence was built and the ground was ready, it was time to plant seeds.

Again, using what we had, I grabbed sticks from the ground and yarn from the house to create rows for our vegetables.

We now had rows of lettuce, spinach, beets, carrots, green beans, kale, and tomatoes.  {Along with some flower bushes that began to grow already.  Those will be transplanted at the end of the season.}

SUBURBAN GARDEN GROWING

It was so exciting to watch the seeds emerge from the ground.

And while seedlings began to sprout up, I spent time painting our suburban vegetable garden “fence.”  {Side note: I’m sure our neighbors were possibly questioning our sanity at this point.  To be honest, so was I!}  Using exterior white latex paint {that I found in the basement when we moved here} three coats were painted on the fence.

It was so exciting to pick that first handful of lettuce and spinach.  Every day since, you will find us out there picking greens so we can have a salad at lunch {and maybe even dinner too!}.

Warning: do NOT ignore the weeds for 2 weeks!

CREATING OUR GARDEN VIDEO

OUR SUBURBAN VEGETABLE GARDEN

Our 4 tiny tomato plants have grown humongous and I better learn how to make and can sauce really soon!

Beets are a favorite among my family.

If you look closely, you may see 3 more tomato plants.  They popped up on their own in the midst of a lettuce row.  I never turn down free plants, so I am letting them grow just where they are.  {Most likely, they popped up from the compost we dumped here.}

I am trying to use every available space.  And even though some things didn’t pop up, I have re-seeded and see sprouts already!

Here is one of the gates James made.  Both of them are screens as we thought it was the best decision from a safety perspective.  Each gate has a little hook so that we can lock up our suburban vegetable garden at night.

Lookie!  The window boxes have grown so much too!

We are utilizing every available space and planted green beans in this little section as well.

{HOW TO BUILD A WINDOW BOX}

{OUR BACK PORCH MAKEOVER}   {WINDOW BOX TUTORIAL}

It has been so fun to create and watch our suburban vegetable garden grow.  A small space, a sense of adventure, and some seeds is all that is needed!

Do you grow a vegetable garden?

SHOP THIS POST