Our first garden, if you can call it that, and the front porch is decorated

Our first garden, if you can call it that, and the front porch is decorated

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• 6.12.2013

I am not a gardener, I'm sad to say. My mom has always had tons of beautiful flowers on three sides of the house, and my parents-in-law grow about 30 kinds of vegetables and other crops on their large lot, so my husband and I both grew up around it--but I know very little about it and never had any desire to spend much time in the garden!

But, I do appreciate doing things myself (duh), and the grow-your-own-food movement is one I can get on board with at least in theory. So this year, we're settled into our new place and felt ready to try some actual gardening! (In our rental places, I grew some herbs on the windowsill, and we have a lemon tree in a huge pot that we've carried from place to place, but I never wanted to put the effort in to really garden.)

We have two decks but no yard, so we're sticking to container gardening for now. I had no idea how to go about even something that simple, but we've cobbled together quite a nice little vegetable crop using tips from this amazing book my coworker found, tips from my mother-in-law, and the backs of seed packets.

My coworker found the Timber Press Guide to Vegetable Gardening in the Pacific Northwest at Powell's and picked it up because it was so simple and clear to understand, so much better than so many of the confusing gardening books I've seen before. It goes month by month, what you need to do to your garden, specific to this climate. I read through April before I had to give it back to her. ;) But we got through the planting part!

We bought some awesome railing planter boxes and some potting soil and planted a bunch of seeds a couple months ago. The lettuces grew super fast and we've harvested from them already twice now! We also got some tomato starts, and they're doing pretty well in big pots of their own. This year's been much warmer than the last two so hopefully the tomatoes will be ripe before September like they were last year--ridiculous!

We've also got a few little aluminum pots with herbs and chili peppers in them. The round one on the table there is regrown celery from this tutorial! Whoa!

Oh, about the table... possibly the most exciting part of our porch right now is the table and chairs since they mean we'll be able to actually SIT on it and spend some time out there! All winter there was NOTHING on our porch at all. Nothing. Which was handy for me taking book photos out there with the open lighting, but not fun for enjoying as a porch.

Now that the weather's been amazing, we've wanted to eat outside (and have a few times), but it's a pain to haul chairs out there and not have a place to put the plate. ;) So literally just yesterday, we picked up this bistro set from Craigslist. I think it's a few years old from Ikea, but it works just fine for now. I've been shopping around a little for patio sets, but nothing has been perfect and the $50 used set from Craigslist is more my speed right now than finding the perfect thing, anyway.

The hot pink rug I picked up at Ikea several months ago because I looooved it... those colors! So it sat rolled up in the closet until the weather got better recently and I unwrapped it. Always exciting to find new things you've already bought. ;)

So happy with how our summery porch is coming along! Hoping for more crops and meals spent outdoors soon!

Would love to hear your tips for small spaces and porches, and container gardening! Have you found any crops that work well? Particularly for the horticulturally challenged, like me?!