The Growings On in my Tiny Garden Patch

What a difference a month makes!

Taken the day I planted- June 19th

Taken this afternoon- July 14th


Things I've learned for next year:

1. Cucumbers are crazy! They grow like an inch a day and they are leafy as all get out! Next year they'll be planted on the western edge of the garden so they don't shade any of the other plants. I am constantly tying them up to keep them contained!




2. Tomatoes get tall- FAST! I put cages over them last week and already have two that I had to replace with larger cages because they shot up over the tops- literally overnight!



3. Peppers are SLOW. And I am impatient. One each of the Green Bell and the Portuguese Hot. That's all I've got so far.



We've already mapped out the garden for next year and it will quadruple in size (at least) from this year. We're going to grow about 15 tomato plants instead of 4 and we're also going to add some melons, some lettuce and some more variety of peppers. I can't wait!

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My tiny little victory garden

Since we've always been renters, I've never had the opportunity to plant a garden of my own and so have become quite adept at container planting. This summer is our first full summer as homeowners and while I started out prepared to plant in containers again, I wound up deciding to do a small garden in the backyard.

I have been working on clearing out some extremely overgrown forsythia (as you can see in the below photo) and doing so gave me the perfect spot to plant some veggies.

When I say small, I mean small! This is a 4'x4' frame, but I think I've managed to make good use of it!

We have a row of Portuguese Hot Peppers

Burpless Cucumbers

Three different tomatoes- an Early Girl

a Sun Gold Cherry

and a Patio Tomato

and a row of Green Bell Peppers


And because I've heard rumor that planting different herbs too near each other will make them start to take on each others flavors, I decided to stick with containers for my two basils.

My African Blue

and my Sweet Basil (still need to get one more plant for this pot)

This is all stuff we eat with regularity, so I figured best to start with what I know. if I am successful this summer, I think I'll double the size next year to include some lettuce, a few more tomatoes and maybe some melons of some sort...

I've also been working on a new flower bed. This entire bed (save for the two sunflowers I bought for $1 a piece) is made up of freebies given to me by my mom and mother in law. I've got Day Lilies, Iris, green and variegated Sedum, Coreopsis, Tiger Lilies, Lupine and Bee Balm. I call it the scraggler garden because it's sort of just a mishmash of stuff all plopped together. But I am patient and in a few years it will fill in and look lush and lovely! (Now if I could only get my weeds grass to grow in!)

And finally I leave you with a photo of a pretty yellow flower growing in my window box. I have no clue what it is- I got an 8 pack at Home Depot for $1.88 and there were none with tags that had names, lol! They bloom in red, magenta, yellow and white. Anyone have any idea what it is?


And a final reminder! Today is the last day to enter my $40 CSN Stores gift certificate giveaway!

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Making a house a home

is not necessarily just about decorating the indoors. When we moved into our house last summer, the yard was pretty bland with some over sized greenery that had to go.

The beds are overgrown, everything needs pruning, the only saving grace are these roses growing over my garage.

Once the heat of summer dwindled into the cool of autumn, we took out the giant pine tree that dwarfed the house and also the behemoth shrub on the corner that stretched up to the gutters.

Then we rototilled some new beds and called it quits until spring.
(Here you can see how empty the yard was over the winter)

Well, my friends, spring has sprung and I am dead sick of looking at my barren dust bowl of a front yard, so as time and money permit, we're beginning to add some life back to our little home.




Today, we tackled the new front bed.


We planted a Cleveland Pear Tree

Some dwarf Japanese Juniper shrubs

A broom plant

Some bottle brush fountain grass (which is the dead looking tuft in front of my giant piece of driftwood- which is there to hide the stump from the pine tree we removed last fall)

Delicious smelling lavender

and some white candytuft

Finally, I dragged my old cement bird bath out of hiding in the back yard and placed it in the front bed to balance out the pear tree and mulched the whole area. We lined the bed with rocks from the beach down the road
Sorry for the quality of some of these pictures, it was getting dark and I was rushing to get the shots. I'll update tomorrow with more photos!

Little by little, getting there!

Oh, and don't forget! Head on over to Low Tide High Style -Monday is the last night to be entered to win a pair of my pottery shard earrings!

updated: a few photos of the finished bed

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