intro post

[rafiwinters]

Hello gardeners! So glad to have found you!

I'm EmeraldEm, or you can call me Em. I live in Providence, Rhode Island in the U.S. I was my dad's gardening assistant as a child (I'm 53) but have never had a garden or space for it as an adult. Just house plants. But suddenly my wife and I moved to a new apartment where there's a raised garden bed at the back of the property. So I asked for and received permission from the landlord to use it.

I have yet to go and measure it to see what the square footage is, but that's on my list. I'd started to get some tools and stuff two months ago, then the pandemic hit and everything went to heck. Now the weather's good I really want to get going! Here are some things I want to plant:

* lavender, dill, mint (I know mint should be in a separate pot or plot). Maybe sage?

* lettuce, carrots, tomatoes

* some pretty flower-things that will nicely grow on and cover the rather ugly stone walls of the raised bed

I've got a trowel, a cultivator and something that looks like a trowel but is narrower and maybe longer. Not sure what it is. The soil has clearly not been worked in ages and has some trash and a lot of weeds in it. Also some rocks. I'd clear it first before cultivating and planting.

So, basically, I'm starting from scratch. Any advice, comments, etc. would be very welcome. Thank you! :)

Comments

[derridian]

Ooh, that sounds like a really good size and situation - you can grow a lot of veg in an area that size and handwatering it with a decent sized watering can is eminantly doable if necessary (especially if you don't have stupidly hot summers the way some of us do).

So, my other advice at this stage is to be aware of what plants are going to be permenant - like lavender and any of the woody herbs like sage and rosemary - and decide on their placement first because everything else you can move around from season to season if they don't work in a particular spot. I don't know if you have access on all sides or if one side is up against a wall. In the first case the general rule would be to plant the taller plants in the middle (like tomatoes) and the shorter ones around the outside, in the second case the same thing but taller at the back.

My last piece of advice for this morning is that as gardeners we kill a bunch of plants in learning how to garden so don't worry if some of the things you try don't work. Just plunk a different plant there and see what happens.

Looking forward to hearing how it goes; feel free to hit me up for more advice :)

[rafiwinters]

I've narrowed it down to a plot of 22 square feet--I don't want to overestimate what I can physically do all at once. (Physical disabilities here, also just plain middle age.) Thanks for your advice about the permanent plants vs. others, I hadn't thought of that. I have access at the front of the plot plus less easily from the sides.