Show the Love, and Weekly Features

I want to know how many people actually see this blog. If you are reading this please leave a comment and let me know. You can leave an anonymous comment if you do not want to be known, but I am curious to know if anyone actually reads this thing.

Also, I am thinking about doing a weekly feature on a garden, (someone's besides mine). So nominate your favorite gardener or public garden! To nominate a gardener/garden send a photo of the garden and name and location (first name only is fine) to growgrowgarden@gmail.com
I will choose feature one a week, you might be the first!

I would also like stories about gardening disasters/bloopers! Send your funny anecdotes to growgrowgarden@gmail.com and your story might be featured on the blog!

Hidden Gardening Benefits

One of the benefits of gardening is having fresh, organic, healthy produce available during growing season. Another benefit is getting outdoors and being active. By being outside you get Vitamin D from the sun and by being active you can lose or manage your weight. I am not saying that gardening will make you instantly slim, I have some extra poundage so I can vouch for that, but gardening will burn calories, and eating the fresh produce is way more healthy than processed or fast food.

One hidden benefit I discovered was getting the kids to eat more vegetables. My kids have never been the kind that dislike veggies, but they are more willing to try something that they have had a hand in, including the garden. They are very excited about trying eggplant and the rainbow blend carrots that they helped plant.

We've incorporated both flower and vegetable gardening into their activities. Gardening with your kids also provides some great teaching moments such as learning about seed germination, parts of a flower, plant cells and reproduction, the water cycle, nutrition, and environmental issues. We started planting with my kids as an Earth Day project and since we've started to upgrade our gardens and they are bigger and can do more, they help with everything from planting to watering, weeding, and harvesting.

So far this year my kids have planted cantaloupes, and eggplant. This weekend we plan on planting sunflowers, and strawberry plants, and if the weather cooperates, we should get more of the seeds planted in the starter pots.

The weather was nice enough Wednesday to get my garden path lights out. I really like how they turned out.

Planting the Seeds of Success?

I spent all afternoon yesterday outside in the garden. My kids played and rode their bikes and my husband helped me weed dandelions and dig holes. I transplanted some Daffodils (I know wrong time of year, but it had to get done or they were going to die anyway) and planted some purple Wandering Jew that I got from my sister last fall and rooted in water in the windowsill thorough the winter.

I also planted my carrot seeds and decided I really dislike the peat pots. I prefer plastic, but went with peat and there's no turning back now. It rained last night, and snowed/sleeted this morning but was only 36 degrees so I think my plants will be ok. Only thing I am really worried about is the Wandering Jew because the herbs should be fine.


I will attack the fire ants this week weather permitting, so my hubby can finish getting the garden spot ready. I need to map out my planting areas, and get some strawberry plants set out asap. I also got more seeds in the mail yesterday. I received Okra, same variety as last year which really produced for us (Annie Oakley), Yellow Summer Squash, Zuccini, and Sweet Corn. I did not plant zuccini or corn last year so we'll see how it comes out this year.

To Compost or Not to Compost...That is the Question!

One thing I have been thinking about doing is composting. I know it is a good fertilizer, but I am concerned about the cost and smell. I live in close quarters to my neighbors and would need to buy an enclosed composter. They are pretty expensive and I am just not sure I am ready to commit that amount of money and not know if it will be a pain and annoyance or if it would be something I could do without incident.

Gardening Has Officially Begun!

The weather finally warmed up enough and the sun came out long enough yesterday to get outside and do some much needed maintenance. Since I am still recovering from surgery I did not get much done before I had to stop, but I did manage to weed a bit around my sidewalk path and pull up some not so pretty anymore plastic path lights that we are replacing with (hopefully) better quality stainless steel ones. My first 3 daffodils bloomed and I would post pics, but my darling 5 year old daughter picked them all. So I guess we can settle fora pic from last year for now. Those are the path lights I removed, there were 12 total.

My wonderful husband weeded my entire flower bed, raked the yard, and started weeding the garden spot which looked really good except for the huge fire ant mound at one end. I will try the boiling water method to get rid of them and if that doesn't work dirty mop water had killed them before and if they are still kicking after that I guess I will have to resort to poison/pesticide which I really don't want to do since I want to try and stay as organic as possible, but fire ants are nasty little critters and very hard to get rid of.

I am starting my seeds this afternoon and will post some more pics then. I have blueberries starting to bud, strawberry plants to try and get out, and seeds to start. It is supposed to rain this weekend. I was looking forward to a nice sunny weekend like yesterday and today, I certainly hope I can get at least one day of stuff done this weekend so my hubby can get the garden spot ready.

First Seeds Have Arrived and Herbs are Planted

The first of the seeds that I ordered have arrived! Carrots, I got a rainbow blend for the kids to have fun with and a tender sweet variety also. The kids planted cantaloupe and eggplant in their little pots yesterday which are in my kitchen windowsill. I should get my other seeds and plants this week according to UPS tracking.
(Carrot photos courtesy of Gurneys.com)


I planted my window box herbs yesterday (which are actually on my front porch rail, not a window). I will post a pic later if it stops raining, and I can get a pic of them. I planted cilantro, basil, rosemary, mint, and oregano.
I would like a couple more herbs, but I don't have room in my window box, so I'll have to decide how I want to plant them. Probably in a clay pot on my porch, maybe a hanging basket.

Method(s) and Style(s) of Gardening

I do not have a lot of space, so I used my own method of modified square foot gardening. My garden was pretty congested, and there are pros and cons to it. A pro was there was not much weeding that had to be done, but the con was it was harder to harvest and I missed a few cucumbers and squash because of the dense growth. One thing I will do different this year is try to do more vertical gardening. I am using tomato cages and lattice to try and get the most out of the vines, so I can plant more of each, and they will not overwhelm the other non-vining plants.



I am an organic gardener. I also use my own soil, and put mulch around the plants to minimize weeds. Here is a pic of my garden in the early stages last year. I removed a few of the tomato plants to make room because my heirlooms got enormous. I staked them, but they got so big and heavy they outgrew the stakes, so I am definitely getting metal cages this year so I can tame the tomatoes a bit better than I did last year.


I am a trial and error gardener. I read as much as I can and research as I go. This works well for me because I have very little time and it is easier for me to research problems as they arise than to try and learn everything all at once and end up forgetting half of everything.

Why garden?

I grew up in the South U.S. in the country. My Grandparents on both sides gardened, my parents gardened, and there was many a day I have fond, and not so fond memories of seeing and smelling the numerous varieties of heirloom flowers in the flower garden, weeding and hoeing rows in the vegetable garden, eating fresh fruit off the trees, and sitting on the back porch shelling peas, snapping beans, and shucking corn.

When I grew up and moved away to college I had a rude awakening when all of my store bought produce did not taste the same as I remembered vegetables and fruits tasting when I was growing up. I love vegetables, berries, and fruits, and you just can not find anything in the supermarket that compares to fresh home grown heirloom produce. Unfortunately my college town did not have a farmer's market either, so I was stuck with supermarket produce for awhile.

I got used to the store bought produce, but whenever I visited my grandparents I always stocked up on canned and fresh veggies from the garden, jams, jellies, and pretty much whatever I could get my hands on.

A couple of years ago my husband was diagnosed with high cholesterol, and we know he has a family history of heart disease, so we made the decision to drastically change our diet. We switched to whole grain breads and pastas, reduced the amount of processed and pre-packaged foods we were using, and reduced the amount of sodium and the types of oils we cooked with. I also decided that I wanted to do a vegetable garden.

I have had a flower garden for years, roses, lilies, gladiolus, daisies, iris, heirloom daffodils, and some herbs, but I had never considered a vegetable garden. I guess I was kind of scared and not sure I could do it. After all I am a mom of three who works full time and goes to school, but for the sake of my family and taste buds, I decided to just go for it.

I decided to try a few of our favorites, watermelon, strawberries, tomatoes, green beans, peas, cucumber, squash, and okra. Some things worked, even better than I could have imagined, the heirloom tomatoes from my grandparents grew and produced big, yummy and a generous harvest, in fact all of the tomatoes except the cherry tomato gave a huge crop. The cucumbers, okra, and squash also did fantastic.