We’re Preparing Our Garden: A Garden Party Link-Up
Oh the Joy of Spring!
This year I’m doing a new Gardening Series with my friend Wren from FinchnWren.com. We want to share our gardening days with you. Gardening is SOOOOO exciting we just must share!
Before I go any further I want you to know that both Wren and I are amateur gardeners. It’s a hobby we love and love to learn more about. And incidentally we both decided to try Square Foot Gardening this year but more on that later.
We want to share our triumphs and even failures with you. How else can we learn?
Each month we’ll feature a topic on gardening and tell you what’s going on in our gardens and anything we may have learned that could help you too! In addition there will be a linky (bottom of the post) so you can share your own gardening steps with us.
So, come, enter the Garden Party…..
Our Garden Prep:
Back in February I wrote about our Gardening Plans and some things we wanted to do in our little yard. Truthfully we have so much going on inside and outside I wasn’t sure how it was going to come together. I never am when it comes to gardening.
The initial start up costs for gardening can be spendy. We learned this even when we were only using a 7 x 5 porch. But even with that small space I grew enough food to eat, share and even preserve! No kidding! My extended family stops buying tomatoes and onions come summer. It was money well spent.
Now here we are in a new setting with a little bit more space to garden in. Setting things up is taking a little money but we’ve budgeted and planned for the big stuff so hopefully it will pay off this August and many more to come.
My husband has been stalking the yard and garden stores getting a little happy in some areas and helping me to pull this whole thing together.
Gardening is full on for us and we’ve done a few things here at RavenHill to usher in the season.
Beds and Borders:
I love a good flower bed and border. I’ve actually never had one before though. One that I was allowed to touch that is (renting). They can add so much curb appeal to a home. A well done flower bed can make the most humble home a castle.
I took a walk recently with my neighbor through some more established neighborhoods near ours and saw some lovely, and not so lovely garden beds and borders. They gave me ideas and inspired me to at least dip my foot into the borders around our home.
Back in February I told you we are taking a gardening course through Craftsy, Gorgeous Garden Design. Karen Chapman is helping us figure out what to do with our front border. If we can find a rain free day we’ll be digging in there. We’ve even had the utilities come out and mark, just in case.
We’re hoping to make the garden border in front of our home a more natural shape and move a small tree while bringing in some small plants. You know, pretty it up a bit.
There are some purple flowers we’ve seen growing in borders around town that my husband would like to put in but first we need a name!
We’re complete novices in this are but hopefully we won’t muss things up too much.
I did spend some time earlier in the week weeding and cleaning things up. It’s amazing how out of hand it can get in a few short months.
So the preparation in the flower beds has begun with planning.
Our Veggie Garden:
Yayy! We’ve made more headway with the veggie portion of our little garden than anywhere else. We finally have some space for some raised beds so we’re trying Square Foot Gardening this year.
For the past several years I’ve gardened using self watering pots. Those have worked absolutely great and supplied a lot of food considering their size. For a small limited space I highly recommend them. In fact we’ll still be using them but since we have more room and at $30 a pot we’re going in the ground for the bulk of our growing.
This year I wanted to have more produce going on and I’ve heard good things about Square Foot Gardening.
We have 1 and 1/2 4×4 square foot beds up. The completed bed has onions starts in it and I’ll be planting peas (I know I’m late) and swiss chard as soon as it stops raining.
The hardest part of this whole square foot gardening business is getting all the supplies to make the soil mix. Goodness! My poor hubby has been all over two states getting the right ingredients. Seems nobody wants to carry large bags of Coarse Vermiculite around here. Our local store makes their own mix that they say people use in their Square Foot Gardens but hubby found some right after that conversation. We finally found the Coarse Vermiculite at Home Depot so if you need some try the Home Depot in your area.
In the near future we hope to get the other 2 square foot beds up, plant some raspberries (my mother wants us to take hers) and transplant the strawberries.
I’m also thinking about moving our blueberries to a different spot. And now a couple of gardening pictures.
Gardening Resources for You
Did you know you can get a free Garden Planer from Mother Earth News?
Also for you this FREE eGuide: Success With Container Gardening from Craftsy!
*This post contains affiliate links
Linking up to: Thrifty Thursday, Wise Woman Wednesday,
Link your gardening posts
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Fabulous, my friend! Yippee!