Rental Home Gardening

Hello there!  For now we are still in our tiny house rental.  I really wanted a garden this year so my sweet honey bun built me two garden beds.  In this post, I'll show you how we built our little garden beds and towards the end you'll see what they look like now.

This was our very first tomato harvest of the season.  I like to take tomatoes off the vine when they are showing the very first sign of turning.  I then sit them on the kitchen window sill to finish turning.

We have three tomato plants that are all full of tomatoes right now.  One of the plants is so loaded that it actually tipped over in a big storm we had the other day.  My honey cut some stakes and got them all shored up so that wouldn't happen again.

Oh! Before I forget!
NEW HOUSE UPDATE:  We had the appraisal done yesterday.  The report is due on Monday, so we are waiting for that to happen!  Since we are slightly ahead of schedule, we were told that we may possibly get to close a few days earlier than expected.  We are so excited for this to move along as quickly as possible, so the sooner the better!

CANDLE DEETS: Bourban and Tobacco from Two Goats Candle Co.  It's wonderful yall, check it how HERE.  20%  of the proceeds are donated to a wonderful cause until August 1st. Go getcha one!

Now, here's what we did to build our little gardens.  We spent about $25 in lumber to make these two garden beds.  We had all the rest of the materials.

Our beds are small, they each measure about 3 ft. x 6 ft.  First we cleaned out a spot just the size we wanted our garden to be.  My hubs hoed up the grass and weeds there and then we cleaned it out using a rake.

Normally we have a full blown workshop to use for all of our projects, but its all in storage because there is no room for it here at the tiny house rental.

We used 2 x 6's for the actual bed frames and 2 x 4's for the corner feet.  He used his circular saw to cut all the boards to size.  After he cut all the pieces, he assembled each corner with 2-1/2" wood screws and his Milwaukee drill.

We worked as a team and quickly built two bed frames.  Now to fill them with dirt.

My husband had the idea to just use the dirt that we already had right here on the property.  It was rich with the fallen leaves from over the years.  It was basically a natural compost.  There were naturally formed "high spots" from were the water would drain down the hillside and push leaves and sticks up against trees and rocks.  He gathered it into our wheelbarrow and then transported to the garden beds.  It took about 4 loads for each bed.

Before we added the dirt, we used some landscaping fabric we had on hand to use as a weed and grass barrier.

We assembled our little pop up canopy for some shade on this hot Spring day in Texas.  The canopy is easy to move around as the sun moves throughout the day.

Check out our raised bed gardens from our last house right here.

While we were at Lowe's to get the wood for our beds, we went ahead and purchased our little baby plants.  We planted those the next morning while it was still cool outside.

We used seeds for some things we wanted to grow.  In the left bed we planted radishes, yellow squash and zucchini squash.  The orange pot has a pepper plant growing in it.  The right bed has three types of tomatoes, cilantro and cucumbers.  The long green box has pepper plants in it.

Now we're growing!  It's amazing how fast they grow!  You can see all my radishes around the border of the squash bed.

Baby zucchini!  The bees loves the big yellow squash blooms and I love watching them work.  So wonderful!

Radishes are ready and they are so delicious!  Do you like radishes?

Just look at those red beauties!  My husband thought he didn't like radishes and then he tried one and decided he was wrong! LOL!  We are thoroughly enjoying our radishes this year.

The garden is doing amazing and it is so fun to mess with and watch as the tiny blooms turn into fruits and vegetables!  I love it!

The tomato plants are going bonkers and are so loaded with tomatoes!

This is cilantro, zucchini and yellow squash from our garden, isn't it gorgeous?!

Also, I have these crocheted edge kitchen towels for sale.  Some have sold but I still have a few left, like this pineaplle one!  You can see my assortment of colors and designs on my Instagram account.  Go to @ddcamp170 and check out my highlight button called TOWELS.

With a little elbow grease and sweat, you too can have a little veggie garden, even if you're renting!

If you loved this idea and want to save it for later, be sure to pin it to your favorite Pinterest board.  I have a Pinterest board set up just for all things gardening related and its called How Does Your Garden Grow and I'm pinning something new every day. Won't you join me?

GREAT NEWS!  I now have an Amazon Storefront!  If you ever want to purchase anything I'm showing you here, you can pop over to my shop and see what I've picked out for you! Click right here to visit.

It doesn't have to be done all at once.  It is a slow process in the works! C-ya next time!

All Natural Garden Spray for Aphids

Our garden is struggling this year, not sure why, but it could be the strange weather we had going on in early Spring. Anywho, most recently the tomato plants were showing signs of deterioration in a few spots and on closer inspection, my honey decided we had what he called "lice". I'd never heard of plants having lice, but he grew up gardening (for a living) and that's what they called it. I went to Google to see what the "lice" were. Turns out, they are Aphids, and Aphids really like tomato and pepper plants!

This is what the Red Beef Steak looked like when we first planted it back on April 22.  It was a bit distressed because our goofy weather couldn't make up its mind if it was going to be freezing cold or warm, so it took us a while after purchase to get it into the ground.

Here it is today (May).  It's finally growing, getting blooms and producing fruit.  We've gotten two whole tomatoes so far! lol!

Click right here to see how we use 99.9% pure water to hydrate our garden, trees and other plants.

This sad little stem is the first thing we noticed while watering the garden one evening.

And even more sad little stems on the other side.  These little bugs work fast don't they?

I went to Pinterest to find a natural or organic solution.  After all, we are going to be eating these tomatoes soon and we don't want to spray some type of chemical on them.

You will need a spray bottle, water, castile soap and garlic.  Its that simple!  The soap kills the aphids and the garlic will hopefully detour any new aphids coming to the plant party!

NOTE: Please use a pure liquid soap, such as Castile, or all-natural soap. The active ingredient in this insecticidal soap comes from the fatty acids in animal fat or vegetable (coconut) oil, so it’s important to use the real thing. Please don’t use detergents (which aren’t actually soaps), like dish soaps, or any products with degreasers, skin moisturizers, or synthetic chemicals, these are NOT GOOD for your food products!

Fill your spray bottle 3/4 of the way full with warm to hot water and add one to two cloves of minced garlic.  NOTE: I used filtered water and heated it for about 1 minute in the microwave so that the soap would dissolve easier.

The liquid castile soap would be much easier to use, but our local Walmart didn't have anything except the bars, so that's what we got.  It was a three pack for $3.28.

I grabbed my little hand held grater and shredded off a good four (4) tablespoons of soap.

Add the soap shreds to your water and garlic mixture.  Put the sprayer back on your bottle and gently shake to mix it all together.  Let it sit over night for a good concentration of each ingredient.  I periodically shook the bottle to mix throughout the day just for good measure.

This next detail is VERY important!  ONLY in THE EARLY MORNING or LATE EVENING, spray your plants on all the infested sides, including the bottoms of the leaves (that's where the aphids live).  You do not want to spray a liquid on your plants in direct full sun because the water will act like a magnifying glass and burn your plant up and that is worse than having bugs on them!

Snip or pinch off any dead or dying stems and discard them away from your plants.  We added our snippings to our natural compost bin to recycle them.

Since we normally get our spray bottles from Walmart (.97 cents) and they all look alike, I like to use a sharpie marker and mark on the bottle what it holds.  I wouldn't want to accidentally spray my plants with something I shouldn't!  Eeeek!

It's only been a few days since we sprayed the plants, so I'll check back in soon and let you know how its working for us.

If you want to read all about the original step by step process of our garden, click below.

Raised Bed Garden (Part 1)
Raised Bed Garden (Part 2) 
Raised Bed Garden (Part 3)
How to Make a Small Garden
Making Your Own Organic Compost

It doesn't have to be done all at once.  It is a slow process in the works! C-ya next time!

I'm Linking to:

These lovely and FUN parties!
Between Naps on the Porch
The Dedicated House  - (I was featured)

How to Make a Small Garden

The title says "How to Make a Small Garden" but what I really mean is how to make a small garden that will last and can be used even if you don't keep it up for years at a time!

Story time:  Five years ago we put in our raised bed garden boxes.  Most of the pictures you will see in this post are from the original posts back in 2013.  We built these garden boxes ourselves and I really like how they look in our yard.

There were a few years when we didn't use them and they really got out of hand with grass and weeds.  This year we are using them again but let me tell you, its a lot of work getting them back into usable shape!

Back in 2013 the first thing we did was grab some stakes and string to measure off were we wanted our garden to be in our yard.  Just a rough estimate of what size it would be in the end.

We decided on 4 beds that were 4' x 8' each.  We figured that would give us plenty of space to plant what we wanted.

To build our boxes we used (6) 2x8x16 @ $18.49 each and (4) 4x4x8 @ $10.99 each at our local lumber yard.  The lumber yard cut our 16 footers into 8 footers so they would fit in the truck and after we got home my honey cut a few more of the pieces down to 4 footers for the end pieces then started to build the boxes.

Before we cemented everything down permanently, we laid down the landscaping cloth ($29.98 for 300 sq ft roll) in hopes that weeds wont be bothering our little garden.

We only used a 1/2 bag of cement per leg to make sure the beds wouldn't move.  We ended up using (7) bags of cement that were $3.46 per bag with was about $24.22 total.

NOTE: No need to pre-mix your cement, just add some water to the hole, add cement, stir, mix and more water until you have the consistency you want.  We used a wooden paint roller handle and a shovel to stir and mix.

Next we added the dirt to the boxes and then we poured out our rocks for our pathways.  We went to Walmart and found bags of medium sized rock called Arizona river pebbles.  We used (5) bags @ $3.98 per bag, we could really use a few more bags to be honest.

We used a mixture of store bought dirt and dirt from the actual earth!  We also use our homemade compost as well.

PRO TIP: Put up marking strings if you want to plant in a straight line.  We used kite string and a staple gun to hold each piece in place while we planted.

PRESENT DAY:  This is last weekend.  Time and mother nature took over our pretty garden area.  We were actually working away from home for 9 months at one point, so no time for a garden or anything else for that matter!

Luckily it had just rained about an inch and we were able to pull the grass and weeds out pretty easily.  You can see our collection over there in the wheelbarrow.  Next, my honey used the handheld tiller to mix up the dirt.  When he was done, we sifted through it again and got even more grass, weeds and roots out of the dirt.

From start to finish it took us about an hour and a half for just one bed but we had to get our two little tomatoes plants in the ground.  We'd had them for three weeks already waiting for mother nature to stop sending us the cold weather spells.  I hope we are out of the woods for freezing temps at night now.

This is a great deal on heirloom seed right here!

My honey got them all set in the bed and added a tomato cage to stabilize them for when they start growing taller.

Speaking of tomato cages, you should see what we made with one tomato cage and a stove top drip pan, click right here.

If you look closely in the center of the picture, you can see a 'mater already growing!  I can't wait! There is nothing better than a garden fresh tomato right off the plant! YUMMY!

Back to 2013 when the garden area looked picture perfect!

Originally we added mulch to the outside boarders of each bed.  It was also purchased at Walmart, its called Cypress Mulch and we used (4) bags @ $3.28 per bag.  This was basically for decorative purposes, but it also holds moisture and keeps some bugs away.

As you can see in the current pictures, the grass took over all of the pretty rock and mulch we added.  No worries though, we hope to bring it back to its original loveliness soon!  LOTS of work to do yet!

If you want to read all about the original step by step process, click below.

Raised Bed Garden (Part 1)
Raised Bed Garden (Part 2) 
Raised Bed Garden (Part 3)
 
It doesn't have to be done all at once.  It is a slow process in the works! C-ya next time!

I'm Linking to:

These lovely and FUN parties!
Between Naps on the Porch
The Dedicated House  - (I was featured) 

How to Create a Recycled Fairy Garden

Our poor chimenea was accidentally broken by my honey about two years ago while he was mowing.  He bumped it with the mower and it toppled over (in slow motion) and broke into several pieces.  He was so upset about it.  I saved all the pieces because I'd always wanted a fairy garden and I thought it would be perfect for it.

Fairy garden? Yes, finally!  I have been waiting to make a fairy garden for quite a while now huh?  I really think it turned out pretty cute and now I'm already wanting to add to it! lol!

I found this cute little fairy garden set at an Aldi grocery store.  It was my very first visit to the store.  I saw the kit while I was shopping but passed it up and kept shopping.  I gathered my groceries, checked out and got all my goodies loaded into the car and then went back in to purchase the kit.  I was finally making my fairy garden I'd been wanting!

NOTE: I used E6000 glue to hold the bird and butterfly in place, its held through rain so far.

This is exactly how the broken chimenea lived for a couple of years, just waiting to be revived.

I needed a good foundation for my garden so this is the potting mix I chose, mostly because it was on sale. lol!

There was still remnants of a fire in the chimenea and I just went ahead and left it because I figured it would be good for the base of the garden.  I added a layer of fresh soil on top of the ashes and bits of wood left over.

I placed all the parts of the kit where I wanted them, then made a path using some river rock that I "borrowed" from the surround of the a/c unit we built several years ago (see that HERE).  Next I planted the little succulents all around the fairy's little garden.  Lastly, I added the remaining broken pieces of the chimenea to the ground in front of the garden, like a patio area for my sweet little garden.  I filled it all in with more of the new soil.

Wouldn't it be fun to sit in this little garden and relax?

I think Miss Fairy needs a chair to sit in when she's not daydreaming on her tree swing.

One little funny side to this whole story.....I enjoyed my new fairy garden for exactly one day and then we got 2 inches of rain and it all washed away.  No worries though, I added drain holes to the bottom and re-did the whole thing and now I'm enjoying it again!  Looks like I need to design Miss Fairy's little garden a nice cover that doesn't allow full on rain storm! lol!

It doesn't have to be done all at once.  It is a slow process in the works! C-ya next time!

I'm Linking to:
These lovely and FUN parties!
Between Naps on the Porch