My First Garden

I had a garden when I was a little girl and loved to go sit in the dirt and eat cherry tomatoes right off of the vine.  String beans, snap peas and snow peas were other items that were near and dear to my heart.  Ah, the days when my mom used to have a garden and I could reap the benefits of it...  Now that I am a 'grown up', married and have a daughter of my own, we are starting our very own garden.  Now, if you knew more about me, you would know that I HATE bugs, snakes, mice, getting dirty, weeding, etc, etc, etc.  With that being said, why not start a garden?! How hard can it be??  This should be a pretty interesting adventure! 

How we started:
My husband, Maeberry and I went to a store, talked to someone who worked there who knew a wee bit about gardening, harassed a few customers and watched what there were buying, bought way to much stuff and then brought it all home.  It sat in piles on our kitchen table for about 24 hours before I decided to roll up my sleeves and take a crack at it.

Since we live in Vermont and the ground stays frozen until what seems like the middle of July, we have to start our garden inside.  We bought these fool-proof planters that makes it almost impossible to mess up.  We'll see about that...  They have little individual "pods" that grow when you pour water on them.  We bought a few of these in different sizes to spice things up a little.

A large planter with no water.
 

A small planter after I poured water to make the pods grow.

We bought over 30 packets of veggies and herbs to plant.  And yes, we ARE getting in over our heads.

We took lots of pictures (just in case nothing last more than a month, I can say that I honestly gave it a shot).

Maeberry helping her Mama!


Oh boy, onto the large tray...

And in no time (actually about 2 hours), PRESTO!  We have ourselves a little indoor garden and are ready for SPRING!  Oh wait, there is still inches of snow on the ground... Gotta love Vermont...


Maeberry was VERY excited that she was our 'little helper'!  Isn't she the cutest ever?!?!

So, once these cute little plants grown into something that can be transplanted (fingers crossed) into the currently frozen ground, we will need to first tear down our above ground pool (we've been wanting to get rid of it anyways), BUY dirt (I still get irritated that people have to BUY dirt), get a rototiller, make the area level, probably buy some super important stuff to make things grow faster, get a cute new gardening outfit and then 'dig' in and get to growing!  Are you as scared as I am to see the progress on this?  Oh good, I'm not alone...

Share your gardening secrets (don't worry, no one really reads this blog so it will be between just you and I).  Help a clueless gal out!

Time for some coffee!!

4 comments:

  1. Yippie! Another clueless gardener...woo-hoo, I'm not alone.

    There's gobs of information out there for new gardeners...but it can be a lot to take in.

    If you're anything like me, I'll keep my fingers crossed for you. Personally? When I first started, I thought Gardening for Dummies was a little too advanced for my skills. (I have a black thumb...that's just starting to turn a little brown around the edges...it will probably never be green.)

    I will say this...Mother Nature is a pretty smart cookie. She has ways of getting around us garden-handicapped folks. The world has been growing plants for thousands of years, and surely we aren't the first novice gardeners. I think some plants are even novice-resistent, as well as being disease-resistent.

    One place I find has loads of good info for us beginners/black thumbers is the National Gardening Association...garden.org

    Other good resources are davesgarden.com and yougrowgirl.com. They both have active communities and lots of info.

    Another good one is homegrown.org (from the folks at Farm Aid.) Love their slogan - "In Dirt We Trust."

    Hope those help!

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  2. Thank you so much! I can take a deep breath and know that I'm not along! YOU ROCK!

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  3. I almost bought those pods! See I have no yard to transplant the plants too so I am doing a porch garden. You and your daughter are too cute. Oh and good luck with the gardening. I am learning alongside of you.

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  4. Thanks doll! It should be a pretty interesting adventure, seeing as how I have some of the bean plants that are about 2" tall already... Veggies will be growing up my walls in no time. Can't wait to hear more about your growing adventure!
    xoxo

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