Our Wee Little Garden

I think I've mentioned it before, but we have a terrible deer problem here. Our house backs up to one of the many green belts than runs through the city, and this was one of the reasons we ended up purchasing the house - we LOVED the back yard. However, we quickly found out that the deer do as well.

Yup, that picture was taken the day after we brought Ian home from the hospital. It was about 3pm and if you look closely you can see the brand new spotted fawn nursing.

They regularly go into our back yard and graze - on the grass and our plants. We've lost a lot of plants to deer. We have started boiling habanero peppers in water, and then using the juice to spray the plants that they really like - the hostas, sedum, and hydrangeas. It seems to work fairly well (so far, anyway) as long as we reapply it weekly.

Because of the deer, in the past the only vegetable gardening we have done has been in containers on the porch. We've had moderate success with it, but they don't do as well as they would if they were actually in the ground.

Almost 2 years ago we put up a fence along the front of the property, and it left us with a nice little area behind the carport that would be great for a raised bed.

 It's a narrow sunny spot that we think the deer will be less likely to get to - although honestly, if they really wanted to they could. Anyway, there was the whole issue of finding time to build a raised bed with a child who has a 20 minute maximum attention span.

But then comes the awesomeness that is the Home Depot. We noticed a few weeks ago that they had these raised bed kits you could buy, 4'x4' for only $29.95. They are made out of cedar, and you can buy multiple kits and stack them or link them together - whoever came up with this idea is making bank on it, I'm sure.

So we bought two, and spent Saturday afternoon building us a veggie garden.

It took about 20 minutes to assemble - that was awesome, and all we needed was a mallet and a drill. It took much longer getting the ground ready.

Then we had to go back and buy dirt to fill it in. We let the soil sit for a day and settle before planting the veggies.

Ian made sure J knew where to put the dirt.

It's got the standard Southern vegetables - tomatoes, several different kinds of peppers, cukes, and squash. Yay for the finished product!

We're still debating whether or not to put some sort of netting over it to keep the deer out. We'll see, so far, so good!