Amrita Bhortake Studio - Amrita Bhortake Blog

I recently started my first raised bed vegetable garden and this is what you need to know to start. These tips will help you if you are a beginner and are starting a vegetable garden for the first time.

There is nothing better than eating a fresh tomato straight from your garden or making delicious pesto from the basil growing on your window sill. I vividly remember the time when the 7 year old me sat in my mom’s backyard gardenmunching on the green beans growing in the garden. They tasted absolutely delicious and sweet. It was the sweetness of those beans that has stayed with me throughout these years. I wanted to experiment growing vegetables and part of me also wanted to give my twins a similar experience that my own mom gave me. When I tried growing veggies last year in metal containers, I completely failed. Rather than giving up, I decided to try again this year but made a few changes based on what I learned from my mistakes. If you have a small space and are overwhelmed to start the garden, this is for you. I hope this garden inspires and motivates you to start a little garden of your own, even if it is on your kitchen window sill.

Picking the location: In June 2020, I designed a modern cottage garden for my new home with no plans of a Vegetable garden. The only thing I wanted added was a space for herb garden but we couldn’t add it to the design as it wasn’t flowing with the design. I had planted lavenders in this area because I wanted them to complement the beautiful pink climbing roses that I had planted behind them. But over the winter of 2021, I lost about 6-7 lavender plants and I had to make a decision. Should I replant more lavenders in the clay soil that the lavenders weren’t happy with? or should I add raised beds which would allow me to add herbs and more flowers to this area? I went with the raised beds. I took it as an opportunity to add them to the backyard and planted Tulip bulbs and various edible and ornamental pollinator flowers that I grew from seed. I want to plant flowers and herbs that will help and support the native diversity of my vegetables and plants in the garden.
Type of containers: I went with 2x4 beds because they would fit in this narrow part of the garden between the tiles and the fence. They would also give me a good amount of space to test out my garden. I had also studied the patterns of how sun moved through my backyard. Although I got full sun during the summer months, the winter months on this North facing yard barely got any sunshine. When I started my vegetables in March/ April, my backyard had just started getting full day about 6-8hours of direct sunlight per day. I used larger raised beds than just multiple containers because I wanted to minimize my setup for irrigating water to the plants. As this is California, I wanted to be judicious with my water irrigation and went with drip irrigation. This would prevent water wastage and help me water the plants consistently every day, even on the days I was busy and would not be able to come to the garden. We also get very little rain so I couldn’t be dependent on the rains for watering my garden. I would have loved to install rainwater harvesting system if we got regular rains but unfortunately, that didn’t seem a like a viable option in terms of cost benefits.
Growing the right varieties: It was so tempting to start planting all the seeds found in a seed catalog or something recommended by someone else for their garden. I thought a better way to start is by looking at what we actually ate during the week and go from there. I also went a step further and prioritized the vegetables that I was spending the most on every week. As I live in Zone 10A here in the US, I have a larger planting window than most people but we also are going through drought so I wanted to pick varieties that wouldn’t require a lot of water. You can I didn’t want to make the mistake of planting too much. I was realistic in my own expectations of how much time I would get to take care of them and also be able to accommodate any travel that I might need to do during summer.
Managing expectations: As a beginner gardener, I didn’t want to get overwhelmed with multiple varieties and their growth habits. Instead, I focused on the vegetables that we would eat everyday and that would actually get used in my kitchen recipes. I also wanted to have fun in the process and didn’t want to get discouraged.
Planning the Garden layout: I had a rough garden plan before I started planting. I had planned to plant all the tall indeterminate tomato plants on the north side right along the fence. I created a vertical garden support system using my fence so that I could grow them in a small space. My goal was to utilize almost every square inch of the soil in those raised beds. If you are creating a garden layout, try to keep the vegetable planters or raised beds closest to your kitchen or paths that you frequently use. As these beds are directly outside my kitchen, I find it easy to walk to the beds every morning and evening to check on the plants.
Soil quality: I used an organic potting soil mix to fill up the raised beds. If I had to fill more beds, the one thing I would do differently is add fillers lining the base. Some of the fillers are cardboards, old newspapers, etc. I also used mycorrhizal fungi in the holes I made to plant the seedlings. If I direct seeded plants, I fertilized it after I saw the true leaves of the plant with a diluted mixture of sea kelp and water.
Permaculture and Polyculture planting: Polyculture planting is when you mix many types of plants in one space. Initially, the reason I decided on this approach is mainly because I was short of space having only 3 2x4 feet raised beds. I love this approach as it helps me manage the plants a lot better with fewer pesticides even if I use only organic pesticides. Interplanting companion plants like marigold, lavender, oregano, calendula even basil helped a ton with managing pests. As I was growing in a relatively small amount of space, I wanted to maximize the use of my garden bed space and use every single inch that was available to me. That meant that when I saw any gaps in between the plants, I started adding either herbs like cilantro, basil, rosemary, oregano and lemongrass in them. Or I added annual flowers like nasturtium, bachelors buttons, calendula and marigolds. I wanted to integrate different layers of textures, colors and smells in this tiny space.
Why am I using a Permaculture approach to gardening: Permaculture is a gardening system that is inspired by nature. It teaches you how to work with, rather than against nature. Permaculture helps you in creating a framework for a garden that has systems put into place that work with each other. I like to think of gardening in terms of everything that I put into my garden is going to give me back something in return. It might be in terms of produce like vegetables and fruits, it might be flowers that I can eat or that just give me joy when I bring some into my home and decorate it. And finally, which I think is the most important one is it might teach me something. Like the fact that I interplanted basil with my tomatoes led to reduced hornworms on my tomatoes or the fact that I can add Nasturtiums to pull the aphids away from my kale and arugula.
Challenges: One of the big challenges for me as a beginner vegetable garden was analysis paralysis of the gorgeous and beautiful varieties of vegetables available on the market. The way I decided to overcome that was by choosing only the vegetables that we actually ate everyday. For this I took it a step further and looked at my grocery bills and found which vegetables I was spending the most amount of money on during every grocery run. This helped me focus on specific vegetables and learn how to grow them rather than get overwhelmed with the different kinds of vegetables available on the market. I also added some fun fruits in there like the strawberries.