Saturday, May 24, 2014

Gardening 101: A Beginner (me) and My Garden

I've been saying for years that I wanted to plant a garden.  Years!  I've grown tomatoes for the past two years.  The first year I planted three plants myself and they did way better than I expected.  Last year, they decided to come up all on their own and became their own little tomato jungle.  Oops!  Both years I had way more tomatoes than I could keep up with but it was so nice having fresh tomatoes whenever I wanted.  And I finally felt like I was starting to get the hang of this keeping plants alive thing :)  This year I said I was going to plant a garden no matter what because I love the idea of having all those fresh veggies just waiting for my family to eat!  Unfortunately, I am also what you would call a clueless gardener.  I've never done it before (besides tomatoes), and I admit that I haven't the slightest idea on what works best or anything else that goes into gardening.  This will be the year that I learn.  I'm not sure how it will go, if I will be able to keep everything alive, or even if I will be able to grow vegetables.  But I plan on trying my hardest and sharing the experience with all of you!

Last Saturday was the beginning of planning and planting my first garden.  My husband and Dad had worked together to build two boxes for me to use (see below picture).  It felt like the possibilities to what I could grow were endless.


The next step was going to the store and buying plants.  I knew that I wanted to try seeds with some of my vegetables, but I also wanted some starter plants that had already begun to grow.  I had a list planned out in my head of all the different vegetables I wanted to plant as well.  That list went out the window as soon as I found the gardening section at the store :)  This is what I ended up bringing home with me:


I came home with entirely too much but I was so excited.  Saturday we decided to dig in and get everything planted.


This is box number one and has all kinds of different veggies.  I planted green bell peppers, red bell peppers, yellow bell peppers, banana peppers, cucumbers, and four tomato plants.  Four!  Two are cherry tomato plants and two are regular tomato plants.



In box two I have broccoli and romaine lettuce plants.  For seeds I planted peas, radishes, green onion, beans, carrots, and sugar snap peas.  This is what you call insanity :) But in a good way of course!

I'm a newbie so I'm planning on going to the library to pick up some gardening books.  If you have any particular recommendations on this subject (or just with gardening in general) feel free to share!  I'm going to need all of the help that I can get!  Hopefully, by the end of the summer I will be sharing all of the rewards of having a vegetable garden in pictures.  Now, it is time to go water those plants!

7 comments:

  1. Sam the garden is looking awesome! It is a wonderful feeling to plant fruits and veggies and watch them grow...in the veggies case...have food as a result.
    Good luck with it and enjoy!
    I've tried planting veggies before but it seems the critters in my yard eat them before they can even really grow.
    Last summer some animal pulled out several of my flower plants, ate the bulbs, then left the rest just strewn around. Other times squirrells have just bitten off the heads of my young sunflowers and left them headless.

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  2. Sam, your garden looks beautiful, and this will be fun for the whole family! I think it's such a wonderful thing to be able to grow some of your own veggies. The kids will certainly enjoy it, too. Best of luck!!

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  3. I have no recommendations as I kill every plant that comes near me. I'm so impressed by your awesome new garden! It will be so fun if everything comes up and you have loads and loads of fresh bell peppers.

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  4. My husband remembers a lot of details from his childhood when he gardened with his grandparents. I did the same thing, but I retained far less information. lol He dug into a "square foot gardening" book over the winter months, and we have a wild, growing garden this year. So far our cabbages are looking GREAT, we have lots of yellow squash and zucchini growing, and our cherry tomatoes and onions are looking pretty good too. I wish you luck on your own garden! You're off to a great start.

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  5. How exciting! It sounds like you know more about what you're doing than you give yourself credit for. :-)

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  6. Your kids are going to LOVE this!! We do tomatoes and Elle loves to go out and look at the tomato plants with me. I'm a newbie as well (last year was my experimental year) so no tips but do enjoy!! And share pics of your bounty with us.

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  7. I love your gardening boxes! They look wonderful all planted. We have a plot at the end of our yard and got it all planted about a week and a half ago. We do all seeds though and then asking our garage where it's really sunny we put the tomato plants of which I think we planted too many again. We could barely keep up to the tomatoes last year but I think this year I'll stew sim wants freeze them for sauce.

    My favorite thing about planting is seeing it all grow. I love stopping each day to see the seedlings poking through the ground and then watching them get big and produce veggies. We planted zucchini, beets, peas, carrots, and potatoes along with the tomatoes.

    Have fun with the garden. I'm sure both you and the kids are going to love it!

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