How to Make Your Own Raised Veggie Patch!

I loveeeeeee vegetables. Like, seriously love them - to the point where I have to limit myself or I'd probably just eat grilled zucchini and crunchy carrot sticks all day long.

So naturally, I have always wanted to grow my own veggies! We tried once, however, our veggie patch was in the wrong place and way too small and everything was eaten by the possums. 

This time, however, I had a plan - and I did my research. So, we started Operation Veggie Patch - and now we have our own little raised Vegetable Garden! 

But let me show you how we made it! 

Now, you can have all the ideas in the world - but before you get started, you need to make sure you have everything! 

What you'll need to make your own raised veggie patch is; 

• 1 or 2 Raised Garden Beds ($60 each at The Reject Shop - we used two!)
• Vegetable seeds ($1.50 per packet at The Reject Shop and you'll have lots of seeds leftover to replant at a later date!)Our Tip: Be sure to read each packet to ensure you're planting your seeds at the optimum time.
• Lots and lots and lots of soil (We ended up using ~250L of potting mix for our two vegetable patches)
• A screwdriver to put together your garden beds
• A shovel/garden hoe if you're placing your garden bed on top of grass as you'll want to dig up the grass below so that your veggies have room to grow!
• A garden fork to aerate the soil
• A pair or two of helping hands!

The first thing you'll want to do is put together your garden beds. The $60 Raised Garden Bed from The Reject Shop comes with all of the screws and bits and pieces you need to put it together - you'll just need a screwdriver (to tighten the bolts) and a pair of helping hands (though you could do it on your own, it's just easier to have one person holding and one person tightening). 

Jesse and I put together both garden beds together in under 10 minutes. 

Then you can lock your husband in time out and go and get yourself a coffee ;) 

Now, once you've finished building your planter - you'll want to decide where it's going and put it in the ground! 

We had some fluro marking spray paint at home which we used to mark out how much of the grass we needed to dig out, however, you can also mark it up just by making a line with your shovel/garden hoe.

Once you've marked out how big your garden bed is going to be, it's time to get digging! We dug out all of the grass, checked to see if the garden bed fit, dug out any remaining grass and then took all of the grass out of the hole. 

Once you've got all of the grass out, you'll want to use a garden fork to aerate the soil. Why? This ensures your vegetables have room to grow. It's especially important if you want to grow root vegetables like carrots as they'll only grow to tiny little stumps if the soil is too compacted.

You'll want your garden bed to be sitting on the soil completely, rather than on top of the grass, so that it's even and the grass doesn't grow straight through it!

Once your garden bed is in and level, it's time to fill it!
We filled it first with soil until it was 1/3 full, then added a layer of dynamic lifter (aka: chicken manure), added some more soil and then added a layer of blood and bone ($3 a bag at The Reject Shop) and then filled the garden bed with soil until it was about 2 inches from the top. 
Once your garden beds are full, level them off so you're ready to plant! 

And then, it's time to plant!!!! My favourite part!

The Reject Shop make it really easy as every packet of seeds has instructions on how to plant them, where to plant them and when to plant them.
We decided to plant; Corn, Carrots, Zucchini, Eggplants, Beetroot and Cucumber in our garden beds.

And I know what you're thinking - isn't corn a bit over enthusiastic? Possibly, but it got Jesse to say yes to making a veggie patch so you've gotta do what you've gotta do ;)

Then all you have to do is water - and wait! And repeat again and again and before you know it, you'll have little babies popping through the soil!

Our seedlings started popping up within just three days - the only one left to pop up now is the eggplant!

We also added a super cute solar powered butterfly to our garden. Mum says it would help keep the bugs away - but really I just wanted it because it looks cute flapping around the garden ;)

But tell me, have you ever grown your own vegetables?

If so, which were the most successful?

If not, what vegetables would you grow if you had your own veggie patch?