It’s an exciting day indeed: the summer garden has officially been planted! You might be thinking, Rose, it’s awfully early, but I live in zone 8 (Dallas) so I have a long growing season and am very used to starting my summer garden between late March and early April. Last year I got an enormous amount of food out of my one little 4×8 bed.
I thought it would be helpful to show you what the garden looks like when it’s just been planted because, frankly, it looks barren but that’s the point! You’ve got to leave room for things to grow. In the back row, I have six tomato plants in cages: two red cherry tomatoes, two large tomatoes, a Roma tomato, and a yellow cherry tomato. (Want to grow your own? Read my tomato grow guide here.)
Next I have a row of six peppers on stakes: two red bell peppers, two yellow bell peppers, a purple bell pepper, and a jalepeno (which I’m quite excited about because I’ve never tried to grow jalapeno before). Between the pepper row and the tomato row, I have four basil plants. I might add a fifth but I didn’t have the heart to pull up the Brussels sprouts (which are late due to the snowpocalypse) and they’re right where the fifth basil plant would go.
On the left side of the garden, I have three eggplants: black beauty, Ichiban, and fairytale. *Swoon* Last year I grew eggplant for the first time and quickly became obsessed. (Read my eggplant grow guide here.) Even if you don’t like eating eggplant, I highly recommend this plant for your garden because it’s so beautiful. I’m excited to try two new varieties this year!
I also planted some orange and yellow marigolds in the garden to ward off pests. An added bonus: they look cute as heck in the vegetable garden!
That’s it for now. I’ll let you know how the garden grows!
Happy planting,
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I use the heads of the merigolds as pollinators in my flowers of the vegitables since need are a little thin here sometimes.
Next year you should grow sweet banana peppers they are absolutely amazing and the plants are so fun to watch bc the pepper starts green goes to yellow then orange and then finally red. You can pick them when orange or red . The longer they grow the sweeter they are ( so orange is more tangy and red is super sweet like a bell pepper )