Ales has been making raised garden boxes/planters for a few customers in North Dallas in the last week or so. They are mostly just beginning their gardening journey and the most common question we have been asked is what vegetables and herbs that are easy to grow.
I am sharing here what we have had success with and hope that it helps you start a beautiful homegrown garden. A homegrown garden is not only a source of healthy nutrients for your body, it is also source of joy when you take care of it, watch it grow, and harvest it. You take care of your garden, and your garden will take care of your mind and soul. :)
When we started out with gardening, we grew veggies on the ground. Bunnies ate them, but our dog probably ate most of our garden before we finally caught her doing it. We started moving our veggies to a vertical set-up last year. I will share pictures of our vertical garden in another post. This year I am super excited with the raised bed, tall planter box Ales built. It is 1.5ft in width, 6ft in length, about 32" high and can take on a large load of veggies and herbs.
What we have in here are chard, red romaine, basil, cilantro, mint, rosemary, oregano, and Vietnamese coriander/cilantro.
Chard is absolutely my favorite. These stalks are from my winter vertical garden. They grow year-round. They did really well when the weather was cool. They don't seem to do well with direct afternoon sun. So as it started getting warmer, I moved them to the bed that faces East. They get a good amount of morning sun and are in the shade in the afternoon and they seem to do really well in this set-up. Chard is an excellent source of fiber, vitamin K, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E and many other nutrients. The leaves are also so beautiful.
Red romaine grows well with morning sun as well. Leaves are much softer than chard so don't leave them in spots with direct afternoon sun. These leaves have beautiful color and are so eye-catching, and perfect for taco lettuce wraps!
All the herbs I have here are ones that need very little care and maintenance, they grow pretty much anywhere and are not sensitive to different level of sunlight. I have a lot of luck with basil, cilantro, mint, rosemary and Vietnamese coriander so I just repeat them every year. Rosemary can grow very fast, and it is year-round, cold hardy, so when it gets big, you can take it out of the container and put it in the ground, it will grow into a giant bush one day.
I will share more tips in the coming days including vertical garden set-up, and some DIY steps on making these planters if you want to make them at home. Stay tuned and happy gardening!
Mi
