Fiesta of Flavor Taco Tuesday Garden

Flour or corn? Soft or crunchy? Even if you can't decide on your favorite tortilla, everybody looks forward to a fresh, flavorful dinner on Taco Tuesday. When you grow your own Taco Tuesday Garden, you'll have a fiesta of delicious, nutritious taco ingredients available throughout the growing season!

These instructions are for planting in a 4' x 6' raised bed, but it's also easy to make adjustments for a smaller one. Just follow the spacing guidelines to figure out what plants will fit. Then fill it with premium soil formulated for raised-bed gardens, like Miracle-Gro® Raised Bed Soil. If you don't have space for a raised bed, you can plant a mini Taco Tuesday Garden—or at least some spicy peppers!—in containers kept on your balcony or patio.

What You'll Need

The following veggie and herb starter plants, like these choices from Bonnie Plants:

• 2 tomato plants (choose early-producing varieties like Celebrity or Tidy Rose)
• 1 bell pepper plant
• 1 jalapeño pepper plant
• 1 cilantro plant
• 4 romaine lettuce plants (like green, red, or Coastal Star) 
• 12 onion slips (like Georgia Sweet or Sweet Red)

• Trowel
• Watering can or hose
• 4 cage-style plant supports
• Miracle-Gro® Water Soluble All Purpose Plant Food

Plant Your Taco Tuesday Garden

Use this planting plan as your guide to what goes, and grows, where in your Taco Tuesday Garden. Pay special attention to the distance between plants: Your garden may look small and sparse now, but it will be lush and overflowing in the blink of an eye.

Area 1: Think of this 48” x 24” area as having two equal rows, each 48” long. Plant row by row.

Row 1: Space your four lettuce plants evenly across the row, 12” apart. If you’ve chosen different varieties, keep plants of the same type next to each other.

Row 2: Plant your onion slips 6” apart across the first 36” of this row—you’ll create two narrower, staggered rows of six onions each. Place your cilantro plant at the far end of the row.

Area 2: Place your peppers in this larger space, where they’ll have plenty of room to grow. Put your bell pepper plant to one side and your jalapeño pepper plant to the other, with about 18”-24” between them. Give each one a wire cage now to support the heavy fruit to come.

Area 3: Plant your tomatoes about 24” behind the peppers, with 24” between them. Surround each plant with a wire cage now to support the coming fruit.

Give your new plants a thorough watering, then tend to them while they grow. Feed them with Miracle-Gro® Water Soluble All Purpose Plant Food every one to two weeks. You’ll replenish nutrients in the soil while you water—no extra work needed.

Chop & Top Those Tacos

Prepping veggies and herbs for tasty tacos couldn’t be simpler. Just chop or slice, then serve fresh from the garden! (Be sure to enjoy your lettuce and cilantro when they’re most plentiful, at the start of the growing season.)

Put each prepared ingredient in its own bowl to create a topping bar, or personalize your tacos with a custom mix of ingredients. Everything you’ve grown goes perfectly with beans, rice, beef, chicken, fish, cauliflower … you name it. And why stop at tacos, or Tuesday? Use what you’ve grown to flavor other Southwestern and Mexican dishes, like quesadillas, enchiladas, fajitas, and burritos—any day of the week!