I decided to shake things up with this year’s summer raised bed garden design! I always used to put my tomatoes in the back of my 4×8′ bed but since my incredible Peggy Martin rose has really taken off on the fence behind my vegetable garden, I wanted to do things differently so the tomatoes don’t cover the rose in a month.

Tomatoes

This year I planted two rows of three on the two short sides to bookend the garden. On the left, from front to back, I planted Watermelon Cherry (could this be a cuter cherry tomato!?), Cherokee Purple – my favorite!, and Old German, a big yellow and orange striped heirloom tomato.

Read my article about how to grow tomatoes here!

On the right side from front to back, I planted Tomato Rapunzel, Yellow Pear, and Husky Red Cherry – all cherry tomatoes. I do prefer to grow cherry tomatoes because you just get such a high yield! Plus I buy and use cherry tomatoes the most often in my kitchen.

Basil

I always plant basil near my tomatoes. I bought four standard sweet basil plants to plant im the four spaces between my six tomato plants. I also couldn’t resist a basil variety called Spicy Globe. When I smelled it at the nursery, I just had to have it. It smells intoxicating! What fun that jar of pesto will be.

Squash

I was so hoping to find Golden Griller Squash again but sadly I did not. I grabbed and Aristocrat Zucchini and what was marked as “Culinary collection Zucchini.” I’ve grown Aristocrat before and it did quite well in my garden. We have a horrendous squash vine borer problem here in Texas with not one, not two, but three rounds of the pests but I can usually get a fantastic amount of squash blossoms and two harvests of zucchini before the SVB take them out mid-summer. Since you really can’t buy squash blossoms anywhere here, it’s still worth it to me to plant squash!

Okra

The very best thing I grew last year was okra and I didn’t even write about it. Crazy, I know! I am vowing to write about growing okra this year. It’s so incredibly easy and satisfying to grow. I actually froze most of my okra last year to use in gumbo all winter long and it was absolutely delicious. 

Eggplant

Behind the squash and okra, I planted Black Beauty Eggplant and Fairytale Eggplant. Eggplant is one of my favorite things to grow. Unfortunately, last year the bastards – I mean squirrels – that live in my tree decided that the plants were a delicacy. They ate all of my eggplant plants down to the dirt I think five or six times. It kept growing back but we had an insanely hot summer last year and it didn’t really recover after the last attack. This year, I have rigged a temporary fortress around the cages using chicken wire and a garden cover. I’m going to have my dad build something to protect them from the squirrels. I’ll keep y’all posted!

Pickles

For the first time ever, I decided to grow little cucumbers for pickles! I planted a Bush Pickle variety of cucumber that’s specifically for pickling. I thought that would be a fun new experiment for us all!

Marigolds

As always, I also planted half a dozen marigolds around the garden. Marigolds are fantastic for any vegetable garden because they ward off pests. Plus, they look so cute!

Fertilizer & More

I’ll sprinkle some vegetable garden fertilizer (I’ve been using Miracle Gro Shake n Feed the last few years and it’s worked great!) later this week and again halfway through the summer. I talk about this in every garden article, but I also feed Sea Magic seaweed fertilizer every month. It makes vegetables sweeter and more delicious. I highly recommend it! You’ll find it in my Amazon store. A $10 packet diluted per instructions last me all season.