Planning for a Garden

We have been into vegetable gardening this year. It all started with a couple of tomato plants and some herbs in the fall. Since then, we have successfully grown:
- about 10 different varieties of tomatoes (DELICIOUS!)
- tomatillo plant (just now producing fruit)
- lots of basil
- cilantro (grows too quickly and goes to seed)
- parsley (you can cut this down to the stems and it grows back!)
- thyme (starting to flower and go to seed)
- rosemary (mmm fragrant)
- tarragon
- oregano
- Mexican oregano (don't know the difference in taste, but it looks different)
- chocolate mint (keep mint in its container, the roots will spread and take over)
- lavender (I think that's what it is)
- chives (never cut these, not sure what it tastes like)

Of course, we have had to be smart about where to grow these due to our lack of space. Not so in the new house! We are planning on creating raised beds for our garden, and 2 compost bins behind the garage (which also needs to be fixed).

Here is the area (pretty big, no?):


Imagine two compost bins in the corner:


To find out more about composting, you can visit these sites:

EPA

Backyard Gardener

We may or may not add a vermicomposting site, which is where you use worms to eat your kitchen scrap greens. I don't particularly like to handle worms, but they do make a good "tea" for your garden.

To read more about vermiculture, visit these sites:

Savvy Gardener

Cheap and Easy Worm Bin

Our goal is to possibly enter the Ventura County Fair next year! This year we saw a lemon that was the size of a human head (no joke, will post pic later)!