What I learned from my First Garden

It's officially autumn here in South Carolina. The air has a sweet chill in the morning and the leaves have shown a touch of bronze. Coffee is being served hot instead of iced. I'm totally into it. Sadly, some of my plants from my first patio garden started back in April are not enjoying it quite so much.  I've learned a lot from this experiment. For starters, I actually enjoy gardening which was a bit surprising. A few other lessons were more practical and I figured some fellow ambitious gardening novice may actually be able to benefit if shared.

1. Not all plants are friends: I (stupidly) categorized all herbs as being friends. They can all live in the same container and have a sweet, happy herb party together, right? Wrong. Certain herbs, like mint, grow fast and aren't good at sharing. They tend to take over the space they're given with no regard for their flavorful roommates. So the mint got transplanted into a new pot. You'd think that would be enough for me to learn but no, I then found out that certain herbs don't even like to have the same amount of water in the soil. Lavender, apparently, prefers a fairly dry soil while basil likes a little more moisture. Putting them together, like I tried, would be like pairing together a fish and a cat in the same room and expecting them both to survive. Oh wait...I did that too on accident but that's another story (RIP Fancy). All the herbs that survived now have their own homes.

2. Not every blossom will produce: Every time I saw a flower on my zucchini or eggplant I thought to myself "YES. HERE WE GO." Every time. Every flower. Spoiler alert, not one zucchini actually grew all summer. It was disappointing but I've been told that was a pretty common issue in the area. It may have been a lie to placate me but I'll take it. I've heard there are ways to manually pollinate as long as you have both a male and female plant but heck if I know how to spot the difference between the two on a dang zucchini plant.

3. Pruning is more than pretty: I had heard of pruning before. I assumed it was mostly about the looks of plants. Because, you know, they're trying to attract those sexy female zucchini plants ;) Okay, not quite, but I did think it was about looks so I trimmed plants until I was happy with the size and shape and made sure they didn't take over the whole patio. As I'm sure the rest of humanity already knows, that was barely helpful in my gardening mission. The true reason to prune is to make sure the plant isn't wasting unnecessary energy and resources growing and supporting the wait of extra branches or leaves. Each plant has a different method that's recommended but in a nutshell, you want to prune to make sure the main stalk, sprout, shoot, whathaveyous, has enough nutrients before the plant has to worry about supporting offshoots.

4. Aphids are the devil: I can't even express my frustration with these gross little mini-demons. They have attacked a few of my plants and completely ignored others. Because sometimes I overly trust the world that things that suddenly appear must be a good sign, I didn't know they were a pest and I didn't immediately try to eradicate them. Because as you may have gathered by now sometimes I'm an idiot. Eventually I wised up and tried some homemade remedies. They worked okay, but I've had much more success with a product called Bon Neem. It's available at your local nursery, I'm assuming.

So there you have it. It's almost a little embarrassing to admit how little I knew about plant life in general before starting this project. I've gotten rid of a few of the strugglers who didn't like the cooler weather and replaced them with beets, parsnip, kale, and spinach. Don't worry, I actually did some research this time. But I am starting from seed so there's lot of room for error.


Are you planning a fall/winter garden? Any other tips that would seem obvious that you want to share? I'd love to know!

Sheila

Hanging Herb Garden (The Ever-So-Slightly More Complicated One)

Remember that time when I promised to publish a series of tutorials on plant hangers? 'Cause that promise was just made yesterday. I'll be referring to it a bit in this post so you might want to check it out first. This planter was the biggest of the three but only took a few more minutes that the first. Lowes only had 2 of the small pots in colors I liked so I got the next size up in this lovely blue. This time there are 5 strands were cut to 108" each. B-t-dubbs, all 3 of these were made with one bag of nylon rope that was 100' total.

You will need:

Small Pot filled with the sun-craving plants of your choice
5 pieces Nylon rope, 108" each
1" Steel welded O-ring (can be bought individually in store for 80 cents)
Lighter (optional)

I chose these pots from Lowe's for a few reasons. As mentioned in the previous post they are cheap, adorable, colorful, self-watering, light weight, and perhaps most importantly they were available exactly when I wanted them.

5 Strand Hanging Planter

Start off by twisting 2 pieces around each other, like hair, for the top 10"-12". Keep that in place by looping the rope at the bottom of the twist and pulling the ends tightly (pretzel knot is still relevant!). 6" down from the first know split the strands of the pairs that were twisted together and pretzel knot them to their immediate neighbors. 4" from that second round of knots, you'll make another set of knots tying the strands back with their original partners. It's basically an on-again-off-again relationship like we've all seen before. 3" down, finish it all with a tight pretzel knot. You can see the whole thing a little spread out in the last picture if that helps for comparison.



I can already tell the sun is making a big difference. The picture below was taken less than a week after hanging the plants. Good thing the mint is in the big pot!



The good news is that the next planter (the one with the pink pot) involves more exciting things than just pretzel knots. The bad news is it's a bit more complicated. If you already know a few macrame knots, you're golden. If not, get ready for more of my made up terms that shouldn't be used in front of people who know what they're doing.

Are you growing any herbs? Anyone want to come over for mojitos? ;) I'd love to know!

Sheila

The Start of an Apartment Container Garden (this could end badly)

Do you ever just get carried away with an idea? Usually, I thoroughly research before starting a project or making a purchases that could fail miserably. For some reason this time I just threw caution to the wind and came home with a sizable collection of baby plants and delusions of grandeur about a patio container garden.



For a beginner, it was bit ambitious but go big or go home I suppose. The collection includes strawberries, banana peppers, green bell peppers, and spinach, plus an "herb shelf" with mint, lavender, and parsley. Y'all. I went all in. But all in, in all the wrong ways. Just in case anyone out there is an naive about keeping plants alive as I am, I'm going to fill you in on all the mistakes and lessons so far so hopefully you won't have to make as many on your own.



For starters,there is a huge difference between garden soil and potting soil, which is probably insanely obvious to everyone but me. I didn't make this realization until reading the bag AFTER transplanting the first few plant babies. This was corrected the very next day with a healthy blend of potting soil and Compost Plus. Needless to say, I also had to grab some gloves since the Compost Plus is fresh off the dairy pasture...

Next, I had bought long, deep canisters called veranda boxes which don't come with the drain holes already popped out. You're supposed to do that yourself. I didn't notice until after filling the containers so fixing that took some fancy finagling. The herbs are in a smaller, shallower window box. Aside from the original drainage issue the boxes are great. They're heavy enough that wind doesn't bother them but light enough that I was able to move them inside when there was a freeze warning the other night.

The last lesson was on overcrowding. I had this image of lush, abundant garden boxes overflowing with edible greenery... I had put 4 pepper plants all right next to each other with about an inch inbetween before reading that they need some distance to allow roots to spread without competing for nutrients. Plants, like people, like their personal space. Who knew?

So in a nut shell: potting soil, draining, and space are the magic words. At least I knew enough to check how much sun they would need! After repairing the many, many mistakes, it was time to add the first personal touch with wood-burned plant markers. Oh, and did I mention they were free? Because starting a container garden is surprisingly expensive if you don't already have a ton of stuff on hand.

You will Need:

Wooden paint stirrers
woodburner
pencil
minimal fear of burning yourself



The nice man at the paint counter of Home Depot didn't even make a face when I asked for 8 paint stirrers without buying any paint. The hardest part of this project is following the curves in letters. Straight lines are nice and simple but even the slightest of curves gets a little complicated. Write out the labels while waiting for the woodburner to heat up, then very carefully go over the pencil with the burner. Watch your hands--that this is NOT playing around. I also recommend having a few extras you can practice on before going for the real thing, but I'm obviously a very novice woodburner so maybe that won't be an issue for you.



They're plain, but sturdy and rustic. If you really wanted to get fancy you could paint them or weatherize them.

You might be proud to know that not only are all of the original plant babies still alive, I actually have some seedlings sprouting for zucchini, eggplants, mini tomatoes, and sunflowers. The professionals didn't even have to start these. Naturally, a gardening Pinterest board was created.

Do you have any gardening experience? Container or otherwise. Any tips or rookie mistakes to avoid? I'd love to know!

Sheila

P.S. Happy belated Earth Day :)