My Vegetable Garden

Welcome, welcome, welcome!  Thanks for stopping by to take a closer look at my backyard vegetable and herb garden where I use organic gardening methods to grow an abundance of fruits and vegetables for my family.

If you don't already know me, my name is Becky and this is my food blog, The Two Bite Club.  I love cooking and sharing my favorite recipes, I love to save money on food when I'm at the store, and I love growing my own veggies in my backyard garden.

You can read a little more about me and my blog here.

Let me give you a little background on my garden, so you know where I am and what I've got going on.

I live in sunny Florida (Zone 8b).  To be a little more specific, most months of the year I work in my garden in un-godly heat and humidity.  But, it's worth it.  I've found gardening to be such a meditative, rewarding, enjoyable hobby.

The point is, I garden where it's hot, hot, hot.

To find out which zone you're and if your growing conditions are similar to mine, check out the National Gardening Association's Hardiness Zone Finder.

I have a vegetable and herb garden in my back yard that my husband and I built ourselves.  Here's a picture of our very first planting in the spring of 2013.

We have 4 raised 4 x 8 beds that are fairly simple to make over a weekend with tools you probably already have at home and a quick trip to the home improvement store for the wood.

We filled our beds with rich soil that we ordered from a local gardening center.  Once the dump truck came and delivered the dirt, we were good to go.  I decided to try my hand a square foot gardening, which worked out well for us and the vegetables we were growing.

To read about planning and building your own raised garden beds click here.

As far as my gardening skills go, let's just say I'm no master gardener.

Actually, we can say that I have a black thumb.  No, seriously.  I kill plants.

I've wanted so badly in the past to sport a green thumb, especially since my mother-in-law came into my life.  She knows her stuff and grows and arranges the prettiest flowers I've seen.  So, while I've had minimal success with flowers in pots, I decided to try my hand at growing vegetables.

The more I read about GMO's and pesticides and all kinds of other unappetizing topics surrounding grocery store vegetables, the more I wanted to grow my own.  I was determined to make it work, so I dove in headfirst and started reading up on how it's done.

After ordering several gardening books and visiting countless web pages, I'll say that doing research is a good idea to decide what grows well in your area, but my head was swimming with so much information that there was no way I could remember it all when it actually came down to making the garden of my dreams come to fruition.

I decided to adopt the approach of "winging it" and I sent my husband to the store to pick up a truck full of plants and we went from there.  After everything was planted, I dealt with each pest and problem as it arose, which led to a much more relaxed and less confused me.

During my first summer growing, I learned a lot about how many freaking bugs a garden attracts (spiders, and caterpillars and grasshoppers, oh my), but I also learned about how absolutely amazing it feels to pick the very first pesticide-free, homegrown, juicy tomato off of the vine.

This is a picture of the very first tomato I ever grew.  Man, was it delicious.

I've grown more vegetables than I imagined I would, and also lost more to disease and pests than I thought I would.

I am determined to grow my vegetables without fertilizers and pesticides, so I spend time everyday handpicking caterpillars off of my precious tomatoes and flicking squash bugs off of my cucumbers.

At times it's tedious and I go to bed on many a night envisioning all of the caterpillars that I'm sure are eating through every last one of my tomatoes while I lay there in bed, not to mention the pickle worms that I'm sure are devouring my squash.  Then I wake up in the morning to find (most) of my beauties untouched, accompanied (more often than not) by more blooms and buds.

I know the path I choose to avoid chemicals is definitely not the easiest route to get to the end prize, but the peace of mind I get from knowing I am giving my family the purest veggies I can grow is worth the extra time, effort, and bug squishing.

I use a few homemade concoctions to ward off the pests and save my coffee grounds and eggshells to help feed my plants.  It makes me feel very much like a pioneer settler working the land.

Or a hippy.

Tree-hugger?  You know what I mean here, right?  I'm doing it the natural way.

I grow summer vegetables that include tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, and cucumbers, and I've also grown winter veggies like cauliflower, broccoli, and lettuce.  In addition to the vegetables, I also grow a nice variety of herbs that include rosemary, thyme, dill, parsley, oregano, basil, and cilantro.  Trying some shallots, garlic this year, too.

To see more of what I grow and to get specific tips for growing each vegetable, click on Gardening in the Menu Bar at the top of the page to select the veggie you'd like to learn more about growing.

So, that's my garden!  I love it and I know that if I can make this happen for me and my family, you can make it happen, too.  If you want to do it, do it!  Remember, I'm just an everyday Momma, in your average middle America town that made the choice to save money and supplement our groceries with fresh, delicious, organically grown vegetables grown in my backyard.

For all kinds of fun gardening inspiration, you can also browse my Gardening board on Pinterest.  All kinds of helpful stuff over there, so check it out!

I've also been known to also give garden updates on my Facebook Page, so be sure to drop by and give it a like so you can follow along!

One more final gardening thought for you: