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Area51- Our Backyard Vegetable Garden-Year One 2025: |
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I've been entertaining the idea of improving our large, mostly empty backyard by putting in a vegetable garden ever since we moved to Torbay back in 2014. Sandra didn't have much interest in doing so, and it's a lot of work for one person so plans got shelved, that is until now. Our housemate Shelagh enjoys gardening, so with someone to share some of the incredible workload we got to work planning an on-ground vegetable garden and greenhouse build out. The stories below are more of a "what we did" and not so much a "how to" as we are all still learning!
April 26th: Today we set about planting seeds for starter plants. Here on the East Coast of Newfoundland our growing season is relatively short. To make best use of that time some plants are best started indoors, hardened off, then transferred to an outdoor garden, planter box or greenhouse depending on the variety.
Plastic planter cups were filled with Pro-mix soil.
Paper cups were used for our onion starters, we planted the seeds at the depth indicated on our seed packets.
In the end we have a wide variety of onions, peppers, sunflowers, lettuce, herbs and finally some perennial flowers for the planter boxes in front of our house.
May 1st: First signs of life as our Lettuce has sprouted already!
May 3rd: Within a couple days of our first sprout all of our lettuce plants are up, these were quickly followed by sunflowers.
May 13th: This week Shelagh came back from visiting her parents on the West Coast, she brought home a car load of Tomato Plants that her father started a few weeks ago.
May 19th: The awful paper cups we used for the onion seeds became moldy and smelled very musty despite lots of airflow and proper watering. We ditched all of the paper then at the same time separated out double occupancy pots. We transferred our onion crops to larger plastic pots which should work well until they are ready to transplant outdoors.
Our sunflower plants were also separated out into individual large cups and are doing great!
All of our pepper varieties (Green, Jalapeño and Banana Peppers) are up and doing great. The only things that didn't come up were chives, rosemary and catnip.
We planted sugar snap peas later than the rest on May 7th, within a week they were sprouted and today are doing extremely well!
So far everything is coming along very well!
Update:
June 7th: All of our starter plants have really taken off!
We've already begun moving plants in and out during the day. The rooms indoors only get sun in the evening so putting them out on the back deck on beautiful sunny mornings will both harden them off and take better advantage of those ever important sun rays!
In dealing with the greenhouse permit I picked up a couple packages of Marigold seed which just happen to be the town's flower of the year! These flowers are a great natural pest deterrent when planted alongside pepper and tomato plants later in the greenhouse.
Lastly Shelagh brought back a couple of Red Maple trees from her Dad's on the West Coast. These are going to look great out on our front lawn next year!
Stay up to date on our seedlings in the Planting section of the page from here on!
Our plan for this year is to do an on-ground planter bed. There is pretty well no topsoil back here, the ground consists of sod which is really a mat of moss, grass and weeds grown right on top of gravel a job of the previous owners. My plan is to grub off the grass and pile it up to eventually break down into compost.
We staked out the garden with the rear line eight feet out from our back fence. Next we staked out the plot creating a garden fifteen feet by thirty feet, we plan on using one tandem load of topsoil so we are flexible on the length. Drainage here is very good and the area receives great sunlight just about all day long.
May 15th: Topsoil delivery day! Sandy, although not heavily involved in the physical labor part of the garden build, has been instrumental in tracking down deals on supplies. This gentleman had the best deal by far over anyone else for a tandem load of screened topsoil, was local here in Torbay and showed up right on time.
With soil on the ground and showers in the forecast for Sunday and/or Monday of the long weekend I immediately set about grubbing off the area we staked out.
It was steady monotonous work tackling this by hand, but the cost savings over renting a mini excavator will pay for a large chunk of the greenhouse build.
By Friday mid-day I had an area approximately 15'x18' cleared off so I decided to begin hauling in soil to see how far it would cover. I didn't want to have a pile of ground cleared off and not enough soil to adequately cover it.
I piled in the soil stacking it about 15" high as it will undoubtedly settle. By the time we roto-till in peat, compost etc then shovel it up into drills we should have about 20" of planting depth.
By the end of the day Friday I already made a good dent in the topsoil pile out in the driveway.
With the initial area mostly filled in I called it a day around 6pm. Tomorrow we'll continue by grubbing off more grass.
Saturday morning Shelagh, Sandra and I were back at it grubbing off another five feet of sod then wheeling in more soil.
We left enough soil out in the driveway for the Greenhouse planters and a couple odd jobs around the house, so the final garden size came in at 15'x22' which we are all quite happy with.
That's it for now, the next steps will involve getting some free community compost from the city and some peat moss. I plan on renting a roto-tiller to mix all that together saving quite a few hours of hard labor with only minimal expense. Root vegetables will most likely go in the ground in June, but we'll make a final call on that soon.
June 7th: Today we got up early and headed to the Robin Hood Bay landfill to line up with the crowd at the Residential Drop off facility. It is here residents can pick up free community compost which has been created by city staff from compost collected from residents. There is no limit on the quantity of compost available but you have to load it up yourself. When you get to the head of the line the traffic director will point you in the right direction.
We had a pretty good system. One person loaded up fish pans while the other lifted them aboard the truck and dumped them out onto a tarp, eventually loading the bed quite full.
It took us approximately an hour to get through the busy Saturday morning line-up and another 45 minutes to load the truck by hand.
For this load I got the truck into the backyard and unloaded directly onto the vegetable garden which saved a ton of work wheelbarrowing it in.
The following weekend, Sandy and I headed out to the Goulds to gather some peat moss for the garden. ATV's have this area mulched up perfectly while warm dry weather of late had it dried out and easy to shovel.
We had a further distance to lug this weekend so I took my Pelican slide which worked out very well moving the dried peat moss.
Just like before, I parked the truck alongside the garden and shoveled the peat moss right on top of the compost.
The last step in construction was renting a roto-tiller to get everything well and truly mixed. Home depot rented this mid size Honda on a 4 hour rate for 1/20th the cost of purchasing one. For a machine that realistically gets used once a year, this was a tremendous value plus I don't have to store it!
May 2nd: With the Vegetable Garden all staked out it was on to laying out the Greenhouse. I decided to keep it six feet off the property line and not poke it too far back in the corner to ease in lawncare etc.
My plan is to make the Greenhouse ten feet long and nine feet wide, which is an odd number for construction but will provide the optimum multipurpose interior layout I have in mind. We picked a location and got to work grubbing off the grass, unsurprisingly finding very little topsoil under the sods.
Drainage in this area has always been great having experienced no standing water in this area since we moved here in 2014.
The basic layout will have two full length planters 24" wide on each side leaving a little over 50" in the centre. This will be a multipurpose space to have moveable pots and planters and/or a moveable work station. This will leave enough room to walk down each side of the center flexible work area to tend to the fixed planters. Right now I'm just waiting on a permit from the town before we begin construction!
June 7th: With permit finally in hand work continues on the Greenhouse build! We needed to level the ground and I wanted something dry onto which to build. I chose to use stone as it will keep the bottom of the framework off the soil which will hopefully slow down the frame from rotting out.
We shoveled the stone around the perimeter and piled up the remainder in the centre for now.
June 22nd: After a couple week delay work finally continues today in leveling the stone to start construction.
Just by chance we had exactly enough stone to level the area (which was off about 4" Front to Back) having enough left to perfectly fill in the centre area creating a perfectly flat pad.
With the pad complete it was off to the lumberyard to pickup the first of a couple loads of lumber to begin framing.
The 2x4x10's were select grade lumber but I did save quite a few dollars by picking up economy grade 2x4x8's which will form the bulk of the build. Even for the six foot long rafters, it was much cheaper to use two 2x4x8 economy studs than halving up one 2x4x12!
I had some old 2x6x12's on hand from our old fence which I used to build a footing on which to place the walls. I lap jointed the corners using my skill saw set to cut through precisely half the thickness of the board, then cleaning each join with a chisel.
Some wood glue and screws from both sides make for a very strong joint that wont pull apart during construction.
Next I flipped the foundation over and installed 1/2” welded wire galvanized mesh attaching it to the foundation with screws and washers every six inches. This is to help prevent rodents from burrowing into the greenhouse planters.
This mesh will wrap up the outside of the walls approximately six inches. If that's not high enough I can add more mesh along the outside later.
Flipped back over ready to build.
Next was framing up the walls out in the driveway. I used the economy grade 2x4’s trimmed down to create a seven foot wall including the top and bottom plates. I laid out the walls on 24" centers which should be plenty strong for a greenhouse.
Double doors will create a 50” opening for moving planters/etc in and out with ease. I'll be building a ridge beam roof so I installed a double 2x6 header over the doorway, then added an extra stud in the rear wall to pick up the point loads of the ridge beam support columns.
Test fitting my mock-up rafter!
Bulk of the strapping nearly complete on the outside walls. As there isn't any strong exterior sheeting, the strapping will help keep the structure stiff while also providing attachment points for the plastic greenhouse panels.
Starting to wrap the anti-critter mesh up onto the walls.
June 29th: Ridge beam and support columns installed. I put together the support columns and the 45 degree supports on my workbench in the garage to ensure they would be straight and true.
For the rafters I chose an eve-less design which seems to be pretty consistent in all of the greenhouse builds I looked at.
Rafters cut and installed along with first two tiers of roof strapping!
Test area for the final colour:
Thompsons Nutmeg Brown (left over from re-decking my Mission trailer) which has since been reamed Chesnutt brown semi-transparent wood protector.
All but one wall complete.
Since it called for rain overnight and into the next day, I moved a bunch of strapping inside to get it stained and ready to install during the next step.
At this point we're nearly ready to install the greenhouse plastic but first I have to finish installing blocking in the walls for the planter boxes. Lastly, boxing out the strapping onto which I'll secure the plastic sheeting.
This turned out to be a tedious time consuming process but will make for a great job when finished. The plastic will effectively be sandwiched between an inner and outer layer of strapping so it's not easily damaged during our very cruel winter wind storms.
As an extra measure I installed these hurricane ties which is something all of our crew has done on our shed builds. These are not expensive at all and provide peace of mind when those Newfoundland winds hit triple digits!
Prepping the final pieces of strapping which will become the outer layer used to secure the plastic sheeting.
July 7th: That's it for now. We are finally ready to install the roll-plastic for the walls, and double layer panels for the roof so stay tuned for updates!
Our plans right now are to begin planting root vegetables in the main garden in June. Greenhouse plants such as peppers and (for awhile) tomatoes will come after the Greenhouse is built and from there depend on the weather.
June 7th: Although our main vegetable garden is not yet ready to fully plant out, some of our sugar snap pea seedlings are getting way out of control and really need to go in the ground. Today I headed out on Project Foreman in search of some fairly straight alder (or similar) limbs to build a trellis in the garden.
This cost effective plastic mesh from Home Depot was the final piece. It's not fancy but I really like the look of the natural sticks and modern plastic mesh, in any case it should work great to support our climbing peas.
June 21st: Tiller time! Today it was finally time to set out our root vegetables in the new garden. In the Garden Construction section you can see how we built out our garden with topsoil, compost and recently peat moss. Today I tilled everything together, thoroughly mixing up all the soils into an ultimate planting bed.
First I shoveled up the first couple drills into which I planted russet potatoes. We ended up with three full length drills of spuds and threw the rest of our seed potatoes into three grow bags.
The next drill (fourth from the right) is seeded approximately 2/3's with carrot and the remainder turnip.
Into the fifth drill I transplanted our red and white onion seedlings for the first 2/3's the remainder will be tomatoes.
The final drill has our sugar snap pea trellis and beefsteak tomato seedlings placed inside tomato cages (all ty-wrapped together) and a bamboo stake.
June 26th: We have our first flower on the snap peas!
June 30th: Turnip were the first of our garden seeded veggie crop to get out of the ground and so far it's looking great!
July 2nd: Carrots weren't too far behind sprouting just a couple days later.
July 4th: Finally the first of our russet potatoes poked their way out of the ground and are being joined daily by more and more growth.
July 7th: We have our first pod on the snap peas, so we're well on our way to having actual food from our garden! Stay tuned for more updates as we finish out the greenhouse and get it planted out!
Cheers, MIKE
Copyright © 2025 Michael Smith |
