As you can tell from the title, today is all about our garden renovation! When we first toured the house and property I sort of fell in love with this little deserted (what I thought was a) raised garden in the backyard. It was covered in grass and weeds and missing one of the 4 boards/sides as seen in the picture below, but had a ton of potential.
I have always dreamed of and every year attempted to have a small herb garden to inspire my love of cooking with fresh ingredients. But after the heat of a Texas summer and working full time while taking care of my family, my little herb garden would shrivel up to what appeared to look like the souls in Ursula's "garden" on the Little Mermaid. Every year I purchased the plants, the fertilizer, the soil and the pots, and every year I failed. However, with the love of writing this blog and that dreary but inspiring little (what I thought was a) raised garden, I am determined to not only renovate that garden but also renovate my motivation to keep my garden flourishing.
MY DREAM GARDEN!
Today started out just like any other Sunday, lazy breakfast with my husband and daughter, coffee on the couch while making the grocery list and menu planning for the week (also another post coming soon), and heading to HEB to get groceries. However, we realized our precious puppies were running low on dog food and treats so I decided to head to Wal-Mart while my sweeties took an afternoon nap. While at Wal-Mart in the dog food aisle, I saw a green plastic watering can. While this may not be relevant to others, it made my heart smile because it was the "mommy" version to the tiny green plastic watering can we already had at home for our daughter. Then I realized with this beautiful 60 degree weather, it was the perfect time to start working on this year's herb garden. So I headed to the plants and picked up the Bonnie herb starters in the three main fresh herbs we use, cilantro, mint, and basil. I made a phone call to the best gardener I know and she reminded me of this...
...OUR RAISED GARDEN BED!
Luckily we already had everything we needed to get the garden started minus the plants which at this point were already in my shopping cart. After a few Facetime calls to my Meme (the gardener), we had turned our grass and weed ridden dirt mound to this!
We, yes me and my mini gardener aka "the digger" as she called herself, started removing the weeds with a shovel but realized that even though it was quicker, we were losing a lot of the dirt already in the garden. So we switched to a hand-held cultivator (like this one) and got to digging. It did take about an hour and a half to lightly dig up as much of the weeds and grass as possible, but it also allowed us to save dirt and begin loosening the dirt as we went. Then we dug 5" holes as directed on the packaging of the plant, placed a little Jobe's organic vegetable fertilizer in the bottom of the hole, put the plant in and gave it some water. It was as easy as that!
We put a trash bag at the end of the bed to toss the unwanted weeds and grass into as we went for easy clean up.
She was a digging machine and totally loved getting dirty!
We still have a ways to go and a lot more to plant, but we got a good start on this beautiful day. I am thinking of adding a blueberry bush, strawberry plant, and some jalapenos next, and my husband is going to attach a new board to the end so it's totally enclosed. But first, we have to plant the hot pink dahlias that "the digger" picked out at Lowe's. I hope you enjoyed our gardening adventure and as always, thanks for stopping by!
We were gifted a gardening set shortly after we got married that is in a green box with orange handles and came with every tool you could possibly need for a home garden whether you are planting flowers or produce. Here is one that is almost identical to ours but PINK! So cute and the perfect kit for the beginning gardener.
Go check out my Pinterest gardening board for more gardening tips and ideas for your own home vegetable or herb garden!
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