Pn, I think you can keep the thrill alive by growing something new, but you're right the first year is probably the most exciting lol... Congrats on the zuke Aili!

Hey Guys, I changed the web address to the blog. So the old links on here will not take you to my site. You can find any of the pages you are looking for by copying the titles and putting into my site search widget. I don't want to bombard your timelines by reloading all the pages on here. Sorry for the inconvenience! Thank you all for reading my blog! I Wuv You you guys :) http://onthecheapanamericandream.wordpress.com/ Here is a link that might be useful: New link, same garden!

I wrote this for someone else who asked a similar question, hope it helps you get a handle on how you think you should get started, depending on your circumstances... sorry if some of it doesn't apply, I didn't read it through again just now. If you've got more time than energy, like I do, smothering and lasagna is the easiest way to start a new garden bed for free, or almost. Sooo much easier than digging up grass. Just spread newspaper (about 10 sheets thick) or cardboard, overlapping well, until the area you want to be a bed is covered. Then cover the paper with 4-6" of finely shredded mulch and wait for the grass to die, usually 4-6 weeks but could be longer for some grasses. I've done this many, many times. My latest one is really ugly but I'm just trying to make lemonade out of lemons with this one... drought (probably aided by grubs) killed the grass here so I decided that would be the new sunny front bed I was considering. I did dig out a little spot that had hardly any grass and put some Cannas and Gladiolus there, a tiny baby maple tree, some Hibiscus cuttings which still just look stupid 'cuz they're "dead" sticks in the ground, then kind of working around it with smothering, and bark chips, which aren't my preference but I had them available. They don't stay in place if it ever rains really hard. Anyway, with this, I'm not planning to leave the bark chips there, they're just making sure the newspaper is held firmly to the contours of the ground to block the air and light from reaching the grass, which is what is needed to kill it. Whenever I can find more shredded hardwood, I'll replace the bark chips. Anyway, the newspaper decomposes and does not need to be removed later, just dig through it to add plants in the ground. I've also smothered grass with stuff that was handy, but does have to be removed to use the bed, like sheets of metal, old egg crate mattress topper, the bags of mulch that will cover the spot, whatever's handy. I think it's easier to wait for the grass to die than dig it up, and I don't mind if it has to get more ugly in the process of getting more pretty. One other benefit of smothering with a leave-in-place substance like paper or cardboard is that the weed seeds that may be in the ground are unable to germinate as they might be if you just dug up the grass and/or tilled. The lasagna comes into play if you add amendment layers to your smothering. For example, you could put the paper/cardboard, then kitchen scraps, ready to use compost, leaves, yard trimmings, whatever organic material (OM) that is handy, then the mulch (or not, if the other stuff is a thick enough layer to hold the paper in place and block the light.) It's not necessary to have lasagna layers when smothering, but when planting later, there's a huge improvement if a lot of OM was placed there. AND, while you're waiting, you can set potted plants there... I wrote this for someone complaining about clay, which you...

I would not recommend string for heavy crops as it tends to lose strength over the season from weathering. In other words as the plants get larger and heavier the string is weakening. Now, if by string you mean something with some weather resistance like a nylon cord/rope that can work, but if you mean garden twine, you are asking for failure (ask me how I know ;-) For peas I only grow snow peas and the plants generally don't get much more than 2' tall. They aren't heavy so I do use twine with them. I run twine horizontally from post to post and the tendrils latch on and they do fine this way. Pole beans can get moderately heavy once they are full size and yielding heavily, particularly if they are closely planted. An even bigger issue is they catch a lot of wind. The support string needs to be strong enough to survive getting whipped around in a storm. Yes, more than one bean can share a 'string', but you will want to provide enough area for them to climb that you only have a few plants on the same string otherwise they compete too much for light. There are myriad ways to support tomatos, I assume you are talking about indeterminate vines here and not the bush types. I like using either nylon netting with 7" openings or concrete reinforcing mesh with 6" or so openings. The vines can either be gently wound through the mesh as they grow or the vines can be gently secured to the mesh. Another option is a tall stake such as a T post and tie the vine to it as it grows. Anyway, if you choose to use nylon rope for peas and beans, no they are not easily blown off. The beans will wrap around the rope and no amount of wind will remove them after they have wrapped a few times. I suppose peas could be blown off, but once they have a few tendrils attached it would take a tornado.