Skip to main content

Beginning To Garden

Well, I did it! I bought the very first plants for our container garden. I really wanted to do a raised bed garden, but what with our house being for sale and hoping to move soon we thought it would be wiser to keep it small and in containers. I'd really hate to have a lovely little garden patch in the backyard and have to leave it for the next owners~they're already getting *my* blueberry bushes {sigh}.
So here's what we picked:
a red bell pepper plant
(because I love those and they are ridiculously expensive at the store)

cherry tomatoes


green bell peppers



jalapeno peppers and more green bell peppers
I still have another cherry tomato plant and three Roma tomato plants to put in pots. I ran out of large pots and had to make a quick trip to the store. I plan to get them planted today. I also picked up some seed packets: sweet basil, cilantro, garlic chives and lettuce. I've never grown herbs from seed before, but I thought I'd give it a try. Lettuce is the only vegetable I've ever grown in a container and it did well the first time, hopefully it will this time, too.
I'm excited about growing some of our own food! I'm considering this year a good learning experience, then next year I'll be ready for that raised bed:)
We are total garden novices though, so any tips you have for me (like what is a safe/organic way to keep bugs off of my tomatoes and peppers) I'd love for you to leave them for me in the comments!

Comments

Jamie said…
I'm a novice too, so no tips from me. Looks like you made some good choices. I'm with you...peppers are so expensive, I'll be growing my own as well.
Kayren said…
Lora,

I had this in my email inbox today from a blog/website I'm subscribed to...I clicked on the 'I can't view this email' so I could get a link to put here for you:
http://campaign.constantcontact.com:80/render?v=001cUvs13TMzJjYJMhhDC32T_6lZwGWFBreNRNTbvnYTGiosX778B4tUCRGMZ35OmmGlto78r38b4kMSAMD8ZeMLbqyNMVkyUOTCLLue8or5ibER32-GB9gUw%3D%3D
Among other things, it has at least two links for gardening tips, one of which is for beginners. So it might be just what you're looking for!

So since I'm no personal help, I'll just give you what I can. :)

Kayren
Michelle M. said…
I have never had a garden. The best I have done is keep a basil plant alive for a long time :)

Good luck with the garden. I think that is something I could maintain. I should try it out.
Kayren~
thanks for this link! I have this blog in my faves, but don't read it all the time. I'm definitely bookmarking this post though to read it thoroughly.
Anonymous said…
Hey Lora, I really like your site, and thanks for the comment on mine! I added you to my blogroll.

Your garden looks great. I'm about to do start a small garden at our house too. My first one, so I guess we'll see if I have a green thumb.

Good Luck!
Stephanie
Betsy Brock said…
Oh, this makes me want to put in our garden...but we are about a month away, still. The Mister did roto-til the beds over the weekend, though!

I hope your pots do well! Your little cherry tomato already has a bloom! How fun!
Angela said…
I hope everything grows well for you! I also planted a container garden (herbs in a barrel planter) and I planted sweet 100's tomatoes (my favorite!) I am also trying my hand at jalapeno peppers. We eat a lot of them in the summer, and I thought I would see if we can grow them. We shall see!

Popular posts from this blog

The Reading Game: A Review

I was excited to receive this review product recently, thinking my 1st-grade-son could really benefit and enjoy it a lot. And I was right! He is having so much fun with this game. The Reading Game is a fast-paced memory card game using words. The game comes with 6 sets of memory cards with 6 corresponding readers. The idea is for you and your student to play memory with each set of cards (playing 6 rounds with each set), after every 2 rounds your student then reads 2 test sentences to see how he is retaining the new words he is learning. After the whole set has been played, he is then ready to read the corresponding reader...and has learned 30 new words! By the time your student has played every set of cards and read every reader, he will have learned 180 words. Of the 25 most common English words, 23 are on that list; of the 50 most common words, 42 are on that list. So this little game of reading really does prepare your student well. The readers are illustrated with cute ...

The Making of an Egyptian Death Mask

We are learning all about the ancient world this year with Story of the World I and loving it! We've been learning a lot about Egypt, of course, which is completely fascinating. Most recently we have studied the New Kingdom of Egypt, which includes the story of King Tut. So we decided making an Egyptian death mask in the style of King Tut's would be a fun project. First since it was too cold at the time to paper mache in the garage (it probably would have frozen instead of dried-ha) and it was too messy to do it in the house, we decided to pick up a couple of cheap craft masks at Hobby Lobby. Next we cut out cardboard shapes to complete the shape of the death mask, attaching them with hot glue. Vince even put a little detail on the *beard* with the hot glue per The Princess' request. Then the kiddos started to paint them with this metallic gold tempera paint. It worked okay for the cardboard, but would not coat the plastic of the mask. We thought maybe a second coat ...

Door Hanger Chore Charts

My kids have had a chore chart for a while.  It's one of those magnetic boards and they share it.  However, it's not by their rooms and often they (and I) forget to update it.  Plus it's a little bulky.   When I saw the concept of a door hanger chore chart on Pinterest, I loved it!  It was compact, right there were the kiddos could see it coming out and going into their rooms, and it costs almost nothing to make.   I headed over to one of my favorite stores: Hobby Lobby, of course.  They  have these little wooden door hangers for .79.  I also grabbed a couple of packets of decorative buttons for $1.99 each.  I already had the clothes pins and the paint so those cost me nothing.   I began by painting the door hangers (I used tempera paints because that's what I had).  Then I grabbed a fine point Sharpie and the clothes pins and started writing chores on them, making sure to write them correctly so they will ...