My Inspiration

Last year's garden was a bit of a spontaneous decision, and most of our research efforts were focused on square foot gardening since we knew we would need to pack a lot of plants into a small space. We didn't spend too much time thinking about what plants to plant and where to locate them. We just bought what we liked and stuck it in the ground.

Most of our plants did fairly well, with the exception of our broccoli and pepper plants. I couldn't figure out what went wrong with them. This year I decided to do a lot more planning and research on what types of vegetables and herbs we wanted to grow, and in my search I found this book: Grow Great Grub: Organic Food from Small Spaces, by Gayla Trail, author of the garden blog You Grow Girl.

I LOVE this book! Love love love it. Have I mentioned how much I love it? This book is packed with useful tips on growing all kinds of vegetables, herbs, beneficial and edible flowers and what to do with all of your bounty. It also focuses all of this information on growing a great organic garden in small spaces. What I have found to be most useful about this book are her tips on what plants to grow together and what plants to keep away from each other in the garden. For example, grow tomatoes near basil and cilantro because the strong smell of these herbs will keep a lot of pests away, but don't grow pepper plants near your tomato plants because they are in the same family and require the same nutrients. Turns out this was my problem last year...the tomatoes were sucking up all the nutrients from the soil and my poor little pepper plants couldn't get any nutrition. This year we planted them in a separate bed from the tomatoes and they are doing much better.

She also talks a lot about using helpful flowers in your garden, which not only attract beneficial bugs and repel harmful pests but also beautify your garden. I used a lot of marigolds this year for a couple of reasons: 1) they are inexpensive and easy to come by ready to plant (I don't recommend growing them from seed as they are SLOW growers and not worth it), and 2) they have a strong odor and repel a lot of pests. The third benefit I wasn't expecting was how much prettier they made our garden look.

I highly recommend adding a dash of color to your garden with flowers, especially if you're planning a front yard garden. They really help transform it into a type of landscaping, instead of just a garden in your front yard (which, let's admit, some people think is weird).