August 13, 2026

Our Backyard Garden

OUR BACKYARD GARDEN · FIRST SEASON · AUGUST UPDATE

How an ordinary corner of our suburban backyard became a raised-bed garden—and eventually tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, peppers, pickles, preserves, second plantings and a whole lot of first-season lessons.

Full view of the A Bit More Homemade suburban backyard raised-bed garden during its first season — Our first backyard garden at the height of the season—a productive raised-bed garden tucked into an ordinary suburban yard.

When I look at our garden now, with tomato plants heavy with fruit, cucumber vines woven through their trellises, peppers tucked beneath glossy leaves and beds beginning to open again for a second planting, it is a little hard to remember that this whole space started as grass.

Not farmland. Not acreage. Not an established homestead. Just a corner of our suburban backyard.

And that may be my favorite thing about it.

One of the ideas behind A Bit More Homemade is that you do not have to completely change your life to start doing things a little differently. You do not need a farmhouse, ten acres or generations of gardening experience. Sometimes you start with a raised bed. Then another. Then a few plants. And before you know it, you are carrying vegetables into the kitchen faster than you can decide what to make with them.

This is the story of our first real backyard garden—from the patch of grass where we began to the garden we are actually living with now in August. I want to keep the pretty parts, but I also want to keep the overcrowding, the squirrels, the zucchini we somehow missed, the tired cucumber leaves, the pumpkin that is flowering but still has not set a pumpkin, and the beds that are already being cleared so we can try growing something else.

Because this garden is not only giving us food. It is teaching us how to grow the next one.

New to Raised-Bed Gardening?

Start with Raised Bed Gardening for Beginners: A Complete Guide for the planning, bed setup, planting, care, harvesting and first-year basics behind the garden you see here.

You can also browse the full Garden to Table library →

In this first-season story: starting with grass · building the enclosure · planting · summer growth · the August garden · harvest · second planting · garden to kitchen · first-year lessons · garden guide

At a Glance: Our First Backyard Garden

Garden style: mixed raised beds in a normal suburban backyard

What we used: galvanized beds, white rectangular beds, trellises, chicken-wire fencing, mulch pathways, a gate/arbor and containers

What we grew: tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapeños, zucchini, summer squash, cucumbers, green beans, cabbage and other brassicas, lettuce, herbs, strawberries, potatoes, rhubarb, flowers and a pumpkin

What the garden led to: fresh meals, zucchini recipes, homemade pickles, preserving, sharing extra produce, a second round of planting and a much better understanding of what we want to grow next year

Biggest lesson so far: plan for what plants will look like in July and August—not what they look like when you plant them in spring.

Stage One

It Really Did Start With Grass

Before the garden

Open suburban backyard lawn before the raised-bed garden was built — Before the first raised bed went in, this was simply an open patch of lawn in our suburban backyard.

First beds in place

Early backyard garden build with raised beds positioned before the garden was finished — Once the beds were positioned, we could begin filling and planting while the rest of the garden was still taking shape.

These early photographs are some of the ones I am happiest we kept. The first one is especially important because it shows the space before there was a garden at all—just an ordinary patch of lawn. Then the beds arrived, followed by soil, bags, cardboard and all the unfinished details that come with actually building something.

But that is exactly why they matter.

Most garden photographs show us the end result. Everything is green. The pathways are finished. The tomatoes are supported. Flowers are blooming. That is not where a garden starts.

Ours started with figuring out where the beds would go and arranging the garden around the yard we actually had. We used galvanized beds and white rectangular beds in different shapes and sizes. They did not all match, and that turned out not to matter very much.

ABMH Garden NoteA garden does not have to look like something from a catalog before you are allowed to grow food in it. Use the space you have. Start with what makes sense. You can make it prettier, more efficient and more organized as you learn what you actually need.

Stage Two

Filling the Beds While Building Around Them

Filling & planting

Raised beds being filled and planted during construction of the first backyard garden — We started using the beds before every part of the garden was finished.

Building around the beds

Wood posts and fencing being added around planted raised beds in the backyard — The enclosure went up around a garden that was already beginning to grow.

Once the beds were in place, we started filling and planting them even though the garden itself was not completely finished. Looking back, I am glad we did.

There can be a tendency with projects like this to think, we will plant once everything is done. But a garden does not need to be magazine-ready before the first plant goes into the soil. For a while our backyard looked more like a construction project than the peaceful garden I had pictured—and that was okay.

Stage Three

Building the Garden Around the Plants

As the garden took shape, protecting it became part of the plan. We live with ordinary suburban wildlife, including rabbits and very determined squirrels. If we were going to put the work into growing food, we wanted a reasonable chance of actually getting to eat some of it.

So the garden became an enclosed space. The wooden perimeter, chicken wire and gate were practical first. Somewhere along the way, though, the practical part became one of my favorite features.

First-season backyard garden while the wood-and-chicken-wire enclosure was being built — The enclosure was built for practical protection first, but it also began to define the garden as its own space.

Raised-Bed Reality CheckGardens are rarely built in one perfectly ordered weekend. Ours was being planted, protected, adjusted and finished at the same time. Starting before every detail was complete let the season keep moving.

The Gate That Changed the Whole Garden

The entrance made the garden feel like its own little place. The arbor gave it height. Hanging flower baskets softened the wood. A small paver landing created an actual entrance instead of simply an opening in a fence.

The fence and gate were part of a Mother's Day project my husband built for the garden, which is one reason this part of the space means so much to me. It was not just about keeping rabbits out. It made the garden feel like it belonged here.

Building the entrance

Garden arbor and paver landing during construction of the first backyard garden entrance — The arbor and small paver landing turned a practical opening in the fence into a real garden entrance.

The finished entrance

Finished wood arbor and gate at the entrance to the A Bit More Homemade backyard garden — Once the gate, arbor, lights and hanging baskets were in place, the garden felt like part of the home rather than a temporary project.

Stage Four

And Then We Planted

Small beginnings

Young lettuce plants spaced in a raised bed during the first garden season — Small lettuce plants surrounded by open soil are a good reminder of how modest a productive garden looks at the beginning.

The young garden

Broad view of the first-season backyard garden during early vegetable growth — At this stage there was still plenty of visible soil and space between plants—something that changed quickly.

This stage makes me laugh a little now. Everything looked so tiny. There was all this unused soil around every plant, and I remember looking at some of the beds and wondering whether we should have planted more.

That feeling did not last long.

We planted vegetables our family would actually eat and ingredients that could eventually make their way into the kitchen. Tomatoes, peppers, jalapeños, cucumbers, green beans, zucchini, summer squash, cabbage and other cool-season vegetables, lettuce, herbs and strawberries all found a place. We also experimented with potatoes, rhubarb and a pumpkin. Flowers found their way in too, and together they made the space feel less like rows of crops and more like part of our backyard.

The strawberries also taught us that squirrels can be very confident about who owns the harvest.

Stage Five

The Garden Started Growing

Established first-season raised-bed garden with vegetables filling the beds — Once summer growth took off, open soil disappeared quickly and the garden began changing almost week by week.

There is a point in the season when the garden stops looking newly planted and starts looking established. Then, almost immediately, it starts looking crowded.

A seed packet can give you spacing. A garden guide can tell you the mature size. But there is a difference between reading that a plant needs room and standing beside a plant that seems determined to occupy the entire bed.

Raised-Bed Reality CheckPlan the August garden, not only the May garden. A bed that looks a little empty after planting may be exactly what you want once large crops reach mature size.

Oh Wow, Zucchini Gets That Big

One plant, a lot of bed

Large mature zucchini plant filling and spilling over a raised bed — That small spring plant eventually filled its bed and reached well beyond the sides.

A little perspective

Hand resting on a very large mature zucchini leaf to show its size — My hand gives some perspective on just how large the leaves became.

One of the biggest lessons from our first garden has been understanding the true mature size of plants—especially zucchini. I underestimated it completely.

The small plant that looked perfectly reasonable in spring eventually became a mass of enormous leaves reaching beyond the bed. Under all that foliage, zucchini kept appearing.

Two oversized homegrown zucchini on a kitchen counter with a hand for scale — And sometimes the zucchini themselves got away from us too. This is what happens when one hides under all those leaves for a little too long.

Your garden in May and your garden in August are two completely different gardens.

There is a practical lesson here: check underneath those leaves often. There is also a planning lesson. Next season I will give zucchini considerably more room, and I will believe the spacing recommendations.

If you are planning zucchini in a raised bed, How to Grow Zucchini in a Raised Bed goes deeper into spacing, plant size, when to harvest, and what to do when a zucchini hides under the leaves a little too long.

Stage Six

Then the Garden Became a Jungle

Inside peak summer

Gardener standing among lush mature raised beds during peak summer growth — By peak summer, the garden felt completely different from the sparse beds we had planted in spring.

The whole garden fills out

Wide view of the lush first-season suburban backyard raised-bed garden — The first season became green, crowded and productive faster than I expected.

This was the stage when the garden became something we walked through every day rather than a project we had built.

It was also when the practical lessons became much easier to see: where airflow was poor, which plants needed stronger supports, which crops were shading their neighbors, what was easy to harvest, and what I had planted too close together.

I am beginning to understand why experienced gardeners talk so much about keeping notes. By August, it is very easy to forget how small everything looked when you made those spring planting decisions.

Stage Seven

Where the Garden Really Is in August

The August garden is not simply the prettier, larger version of the spring garden. It is a working garden. Some plants are producing heavily. Some are showing the wear of a long season. Some have already been pulled. Some are almost ready to harvest. And a few are still making me wonder what they are going to do next.

Our August Garden Right Now

Tomatoes: coming in faster than we can use them.
Bell peppers and jalapeños: productive and easy to keep bringing into everyday meals.
Cucumbers: still part of the harvest, while older foliage is showing late-season decline and a powdery coating.
Zucchini: already pulled after a very generous first-season run, opening space for another planting.
Lettuce: pulled so the bed can be reused for a second planting.
Green beans: ready to come out next so that space can be planted again.
Potatoes: getting close to harvest.
Pumpkin: full of flowers, but still no pumpkin setting yet.

The Tomatoes Have Moved From Growing to Keeping Up

Tomatoes ripening on the vine in the August backyard garden — Tomatoes ripening on the vine are one of the clearest signs that the garden has moved from growing season into harvest season.

Earlier in the season, I watched the tomato plants grow and worried about supporting them. Now the problem is much nicer: the tomatoes are coming in faster than we can use them.

This is exactly where I hoped the garden would eventually lead—grow the tomato, carry it inside, make dinner, preserve some when we can, share extras, and start next season understanding the plant a little better.

I am especially interested in growing more Roma and paste-style tomatoes because they fit the kind of cooking we already do: sauces, preserving and other from-scratch meals.

The Peppers Are Quietly Productive

Bell peppers

Bell pepper plants growing in a raised bed after summer rain — The bell peppers have filled in beautifully and are producing beneath a canopy of glossy leaves.

Jalapeños

Jalapeno peppers growing among compact leafy plants in the backyard garden — The jalapeño plants have been one of the most productive compact crops in the garden.

The peppers have been a good reminder that not every productive plant has to dominate the garden. These are the kinds of crops I want to notice when I plan next year—not only what grew, but what earned the space it occupied because we actually use it in the kitchen.

The Cucumbers Found Their Trellis—and Then August Arrived

Climbing & producing

Mature cucumber vines covering a trellis in the August backyard garden — Giving the cucumbers vertical space was one of the best choices we made for a small raised-bed garden.

Late-season reality

Late-season cucumber vines with pale powdery-looking leaves in the August backyard garden — By August, the cucumber bed is lush, crowded and beginning to show the wear of a long productive season.

The cucumbers have been one of the most satisfying plants to watch. They started small and fairly unremarkable, and then the vines began reaching. Giving them something vertical to grow on kept much of that growth out of the beds and walkways.

Now some of the leaves are aging and declining, and some foliage has developed the pale, powdery-looking coating I am watching. Earlier in the season I probably would have looked at every struggling leaf and immediately thought, What did I do wrong?

I am beginning to see the garden differently. Some problems need attention. Some conditions can be improved. And sometimes a plant that has been growing and producing for months simply looks like a plant that has been growing and producing for months.

ABMH Garden NoteI want to photograph the garden as it really looks, not only when every leaf is green and every vegetable is perfect. The harvest matters. So do tired leaves, overcrowded plants, missed zucchini and crops that do not behave the way I expected. Those are usually where the useful lessons are hiding.

The Pumpkin Has Lots of Flowers...and I Am Still Waiting

Pumpkin plant in August with orange blossoms and broad green leaves but no pumpkin set yet — The pumpkin vine has plenty of growth and flowers, but fruit set is still something I am watching and learning from.

The pumpkin plant is currently one of my garden mysteries. It is growing. It is flowering. There are plenty of blossoms. But there is still no pumpkin starting.

Growing it has made me pay much more attention to the step between a flower appearing and a pumpkin actually forming. So for now I am watching, waiting and taking notes. If we get a pumpkin, wonderful. If we do not, that goes into the garden journal too. Either way, I will know more the next time I plant one.

Cabbage, Potatoes and the Crops That Teach Patience

Cabbage at full size

Mature cabbage heads growing in the backyard raised-bed garden — The cabbage is a good example of how much room cool-season crops can occupy once they mature.

Potatoes nearing harvest

Late-season potato plants in a galvanized raised bed with tubers visible near the soil surface — The potato bed is another real-life garden lesson: some of the most interesting progress is happening below the foliage.

The cabbage is another reminder that seedlings can be deceptive. A young cabbage does not look particularly imposing. A mature cabbage plant—with layer after layer of broad leaves—is a different story.

If you want to grow cabbage in a raised bed, How to Grow Cabbage in a Raised Bed covers spacing, varieties, pest protection from cabbageworms, and when to harvest.

The potatoes have taught a different kind of patience. Most of what I am waiting for is below the soil, and now that they are getting close to harvest I am especially glad we photographed the plant along the way. Next year I will have something real to compare against instead of relying on memory.

Small Harvests Count Too

Herbs we actually use

Mixed culinary herbs growing in a galvanized container in the backyard garden — Keeping herbs close to the vegetable beds makes it easy to bring small handfuls straight into the kitchen.

Rhubarb for the longer view

Large rhubarb plant growing beside the raised-bed garden — The rhubarb is another reminder that some plants are building for more than one quick summer harvest.

The herbs do not create the same dramatic harvest photographs as a pile of cucumbers or a bowl of tomatoes, but they may be some of the easiest garden ingredients to use regularly. A handful for dinner, something fresh for a sauce, herbs for preserving—small harvests still count.

And the rhubarb reminds me that not everything in the garden has to fit into one quick season. Some plants are about establishing roots, watching how they settle into the space and thinking longer term.

Stage Eight

The Part That Makes It Worth It

An earlier harvest

Homegrown yellow squash, zucchini, green beans and cucumber harvested from the backyard garden — A real first-season harvest: yellow squash, zucchini, green beans and cucumber grown just a few steps from the kitchen.

August abundance

Large garden harvest of cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers arranged in the kitchen — This is the moment the garden really becomes a kitchen project: cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers ready to use, share and preserve.

Then there are the days when vegetables start coming into the kitchen from only a few steps outside the back door.

Cucumbers. Tomatoes. Peppers. Zucchini. Summer squash. Beans. Whatever happens to be ready that day.

For someone who has never considered herself a homesteader—and still does not—that feels pretty remarkable.

The goal was never to grow everything we eat. It was to grow something we would actually use. The first season has shown me that an ordinary backyard can produce more than I expected.

Stage Nine

August Is Also the Beginning of the Next Garden

One of the things I did not fully understand before having a garden is that August does not necessarily mean the garden is finished.

In some ways, it creates another beginning.

The zucchini and lettuce have already been pulled, which means those spaces are no longer simply the places where the first crop used to grow. They are open beds again. The beans are ready to come out next. The potatoes are getting close to harvest. Every finished crop changes the shape of the garden and creates another decision.

That is making me think much more differently about the garden. Instead of planting once in spring and slowly watching the beds empty, I am beginning to see the space as something that can keep changing with the season.

For a closer look at what that transition actually looks like, Our Backyard Garden in August follows exactly what happened as crops finished, beds opened up, and second planting decisions started.

Raised-Bed Reality CheckA productive bed does not have to stay occupied by the same plant all year. Once a crop is truly finished, the empty space becomes part of the next plan instead of a sign that the garden is winding down.

What I Am Doing in the Garden Right Now

Keeping up with tomatoes and deciding what to eat, preserve or share.
Harvesting peppers and jalapeños as they are ready.
Continuing to pick cucumbers while watching the older foliage.
Working with the open space left after pulling zucchini and lettuce.
Getting ready to remove the bean plants and reuse that space.
Watching the potato bed as harvest gets closer.
Checking the pumpkin vine for the first sign of fruit set.
Looking at every open space with a second planting in mind.
Taking photographs and notes while the garden is mature enough to show what really worked.

Stage Ten

The Garden Followed Us Into the Kitchen

One zucchini becomes dinner. Five zucchini become a strategy. A counter full of tomatoes becomes a whole new list of possibilities.

Cucumbers become pickles. Tomatoes become dinner, salsa or sauce. Herbs get used fresh. Vegetables get shared. Suddenly gardening and cooking are not really separate hobbies anymore. One naturally leads into the other.

That connection—garden to kitchen to pantry—is one of the parts of A Bit More Homemade that I love most.

Preserving the Abundance

Our cucumbers eventually became jars of homemade pickles. Preserving was also becoming part of what we were doing in the kitchen in other ways, including strawberry preserves.

Jars of homemade cucumber pickles and strawberry preserves on the kitchen table — Cucumbers became pickles, strawberries became preserves, and the garden began leading naturally into pantry skills.

Not everything inside those jars came directly from our garden. In fact, the squirrels were far more successful with some of our strawberries than we were. And I think that is worth saying.

ABMH Garden-to-Kitchen Note“A bit more homemade” does not mean every ingredient has to come from your own backyard. Sometimes you grow it. Sometimes you buy it locally. Sometimes you find strawberries on sale and decide today is the day you are learning how to make preserves. The point is learning to do a little more with food once it comes into your home.

Was the First Garden Perfect?

Absolutely not. And I am glad it was not.

If everything had worked perfectly, I would not have learned nearly as much. I would give zucchini more room. I would think about mature plant size earlier. I would plan supports sooner. I would pay closer attention to airflow. I would keep experimenting with vertical growing. I would think about succession planting before the first crop is finished. And I would make more intentional plans for crops—like tomatoes—that can suddenly produce more food than we can use at once.

But there are also plenty of things I would do exactly the same way. I would grow foods we actually eat. I would mix vegetables, herbs and flowers. I would protect the garden from animals. I would use raised beds again. I would keep the garden close to the house. And I would absolutely start before everything was perfect.

What I Would Change Next Year

Give zucchini far more room. I believe the mature-size recommendations now.
Install important supports early. It is easier to plan for tomatoes and vertical crops before the beds are full.
Use more vertical space. The cucumber trellis showed how valuable upward growth can be in a suburban garden.
Think about airflow while planting. A bed that looks sparse in May may be exactly right by August.
Plan the second planting before I need it. When lettuce, zucchini, beans and other crops finish, I want to know what could reasonably use that space next.
Have a plan for abundance. A tomato harvest is much more fun when you already know what you want to cook, preserve, freeze or share.
Keep photographing the imperfect parts. The most useful garden pictures may turn out to be the ones that show what went wrong or what surprised me.

The Most Important Thing Our First Garden Taught Me

Maybe the biggest lesson was not about tomatoes or zucchini at all. It was that a normal backyard can produce a surprising amount of food.

You do not need to become a homesteader. You do not need acres. You do not need to know everything before you begin. And your garden does not need to resemble the beautifully coordinated gardens you see online.

It can have mismatched raised beds. Inexpensive green trellises. Chicken wire. Cardboard showing around the edges while you are still working. A zucchini growing somewhere it was definitely not supposed to be. A cucumber leaf that looks tired. A squirrel stealing your strawberry. A pumpkin plant stubbornly producing flowers while you wait for a pumpkin.

It can evolve while you are learning—because that is exactly what ours did.

From Grass to Garden to Table—and Back Into the Garden Again

When I put the photographs beside one another, this is still the part that amazes me.

There was grass. Then there were beds. Then there was soil. Then a fence. Then tiny plants. Then suddenly there was a garden. Eventually there were vegetables sitting on our kitchen counter and jars lined up on the table. And now some of those first plants are coming out so the beds can begin again.

That progression is the heart of this series. Not because our garden is perfect. Because it is possible.

If someone else looks at our very normal suburban backyard and thinks, “I could probably do that,” then this garden has done something even more useful than feeding us.

Welcome to Our Backyard Garden

This post is the beginning of the Our Backyard Garden series here at A Bit More Homemade. We will use our actual garden—the successes, mistakes, photographs, harvests and changing seasons—to explore raised-bed gardening in real life.

We will go deeper into how the garden was built, what I would change after the first year, individual crop-growing guides, spacing, trellising, succession planting, seasonal planting, harvesting, preserving what we grow and planning future seasons.

And as the garden changes, this series will change with it. Because we are still learning. That is really the point.

Start small. Grow what you use. Learn as you go. Add a bit more homemade each season.

A BIT MORE HOMEMADE · PRINTABLE GARDEN GUIDE