Our Backyard Transformation...

My parents come to visit about twice a year, and every time we decide on a house project we want to accomplish. See, for now my hubby and myself are not very handy. We can’t do even a sliver of the things my mom and dad are capable of, so we enlist their assistance! Hopefully over time this will change a little. My hubby is really keen to learn, and always tries to help my dad so that he might be able to do whatever task in the future. Anyway, this trip we decided to work on the landscaping in the backyard. I really wanted to plant a vegetable garden and test out my green thumb.

Here's what we started with:

My dad built us two raised garden boxes, one is about 4 feet by 8 feet, the other is small, only about 2 feet by 4 feet. I planted all of the vegetables and herbs in the larger bed. Also in the large bed, two lilies, a clematis, and sweet peas. In the smaller bed we planted a peony (relocated from the front yard) and a hydrangea. It doesn’t look like the peony is going to bloom this year though L Oh, and I almost forgot!! Next to the large bed we planted a rhododendron. I am really hoping it blooms this year, but I think it might be a bit too late. Anyone know?

For the beds my dad used mini ties and nails. He marked out the wood and cut using a reciprocating saw. Once all of the pieces were cut him and hubby nailed the beds together using …. Nails. It was pretty simple. He was done both beds in an hour or two, and then we went to work dumping many many bags of dirt inside. The whole thing was a pretty good workout! For vegetables I planted: one large tomato plant, one cherry tomato plant (which is supposed to produce both yellow and red), four green pepper plants, a habanero plant, and a banana pepper plant. For herbs we’ve got chives, basil, oregano, and parsley. We bought a trellis for the clematis, and the sweet peas. Hopefully they’ll like this system and climb like crazy!

Here’s the yard once we had everything planted:

And here it is today, 2 weeks later. You can see the sweet peas are starting to poke up through the ground, and the clematis is starting to climb! We have a few green tomatoes, and the herbs are doing well too. I really hope to see some red tomatoes, and some signs of peppers in the next few weeks. 

And over by the deck, the peony and hydrangea are doing pretty well. We also planted some nasturtiums to fill the space in between with color until the hydrangea blooms. Like I said above, I'm pretty sure the peony isn't blooming this year since we disrupted it by moving it from the front yard.

So that's our backyard makeover for now! I'll come back with some more updates once it gets even fuller and we have some yummy red tomatoes. Gardening with my mom was so much fun!! It was a great activity to do while my parents were visiting, and we got to spend a ton of time outside. 

Just to wrap up, here's a side-by-side to compare more easily: