Last July my wife Susanna and I bought our first house. For the last several years we have always grown tomatoes in containers. However, no with a yard of our own, we were excited to go a little bigger with our garden. Also, with the water shortages and restrictions in LA, we wanted to get rid of all of our grass in the front yard because it felt so wasteful.
So, this January we started ripping out all of the grass (most of it was dead anyway from not watering it) and built two 12' by 4' raised beds. By late February we had finished constructing the beds, and begun growing many plants (almost exclusively from seed). We now have about 30 tomato plants, 2 zucchini plants, 4 yellow squash plants, several peppers, some lettuces, onion, garlic, and cauliflower growing and producing vegetables.
This past month the tomatoes and zucchini/squash have really taken off. It seems like every day we are harvesting a few pounds worth of each, and it would be wonderful if there was a way for us to contribute some of the vegetables we don't already consume on our own to local restaurants.
For many of these plants it is the first time we've grown them, and we are still learning a ton as we go. We had some difficulties with our carrots and radishes that we started in March and haven't tried them again since it is now probably too warm. We really love the garden though, and hopefully each season we will become more proficient and our yields will increase.
We've been actively composting in our backyard with a large traditional composter and a worm bin for vermicompost. Of course, everything we've done is organic and most of the varieties we've chosen are heirloom. We would really cherish the opportunity to learn more, and share that learning with others in the community. In fact, one of the things we love best about having the vegetable garden in our front yard, is that it lets our neighbors see what we're growing and hopefully encourages them to try some urban farming as well.
