Spring Garden Spruce Up
by
Shaina Be
Now that the last frost is done where I live, I'm starting to renew my garden. I live in a townhouse so I only have this little patch in the front of the house, but I have a pretty active container garden in my front entrance way and back porch.
This year I decided to get more serious about growing things we can eat.
Here's My before. It looks pretty green but it's actually full of weeds. I usually don't do any weeding throughout the winter season.
The first thing I did was weed the whole garden. Then I dug/scratched in some irrigation channels. The dirt is the exact same height as the bricks so I want to make sure when I water it then no water gets wasted and overflows onto the sidewalk.
Here is an empty pot that's waited all winter to be filled.
And here's my little helper showing off our sunflower sprouts. We started these seeds about 3 weeks ago in mini green houses inside using coir pods. The sunflowers and the corn grew so tall that they pushed the top off their greenhouses.
She's most excited for these sunflowers and the..
corn that we will be growing. She's a big fan of corn.
Because corn grows really tall we are going to plant them along the back "wall" of our garden. I used this staking tool which turned out to be almost exactly the diameter of the pods.
We dropped the pods with the corn sprouts in and my little helper enjoyed covering them with dirt. (she also stepped all over the plants that were already there, but I don't mind)
we also planted from seed, water cress, Violaciocca, and Alisso. In the empty spots in this area and in some other open areas next to my house.
On the left you can see our cherry tomato plants, on the right some of the sunflower plants.
Here we have violets, myrtle, and garlic grass.
I'm starting now basil and yellow cherry tomatoes to put in when they are ready.
I love using Osmocote on my plants it's a really great plant food.
This pot will grow sweet peppers.
The plants we planted that are edible are sunflowers, cherry tomatoes, corn, lemon balm, eggplant, sweet peppers, bishop crown peppers, jalapeno peppers, water cress, oregano, chives, parsley, strawberries, spinach and lemongrass.
We also planted violets, alisso, and violaciocca.
Growing these things with my kids is a really great experience for them and also gets them much more interested in eating them.
It's the second year we are growing cherry tomatoes (although this year we will also have yellow) and strawberries. My daughters fight over who gets the next strawberry or tomato. It's great to see them so interested in their food.
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4 of 39 comments
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You could even attach sections of gutter (in white, with end caps) to your white fencing as an additional planting area for shallow-rooted veggies such as lettuces, spinach, many herbs, etc. Works great, even looks pretty when growing.
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Thanks for the great tip. I'm going to try that
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Always plant your mints (Lemon Balm) in a container or they will take over the garden
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Thanks for the tip!
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