Photosynthesis

A quick photo update of how the window garden is progressing:

My lavender is producing flowers galore! And seriously needs to be replanted super soon.

 The chives are becoming less spindly. I crushed the tip of one in my hand and they already smell like garlic.

The parsley has really taken off. Reptar, our bearded dragon, loves it. In the bottom left hand corner of this photo, you will see my lavender seeds have finally started to sprout. I was worried they were stunted due to cold air in the window, but they appear to be doing rather well now.

Let's Turnip the Heat

Seriously though, it has been rainy and in the 40s. Not that I'm super prepared for the 105s we're going to see in the coming months.. but COME ON. Mountain Man's corn seedlings are hogging my window space, and they need to get the heck out (I mean.. outside).

My window herb garden is in the works. First, I picked up some parsley, garlic chive, and (true) lavender seeds. I've never consumed garlic chives before, so I cannot wait to munch on some of those. I also came home with a (provence) lavender seedling. I have been absolutely dying to grow lavender since we started our gardening activities, and I couldn't leave the store without it. I'm excited to see how seeds I planted do. My seedling already smells amazing.

Then, I went to my vat of empty formula cans and grabbed a few. I rinsed them out, painted them, and hammered drainage holes in the bottom.

Next, I sent Mountain Man to the garden for some compost to fill the containers with, and planted my seeds. Every few days, I set them in a tray of water and let them sit over night to suck up as much moisture as they want, and stick them back in the window in the morning (I am wary of watering from the top, I induced some gnarly tomato-leaf rotting that way). Here they are just growing away.

From top to bottom- provence lavender, true lavender, parsley, chives, and one more true lavender.

I have a big green pot set aside for my lavender seedling. It will need to be transplanted soon as it has really taken off. It's even starting to grow flowers, and they're lavender!

Soon, I will put in a shelf and plant more things. But we are certainly off to a good start. Yay, spring!

Trowel & Error

 

Two of our four-legged troublemakers (the other two are lizards), Monty (left) and Imogen, in our pre-gardened backyard.

I love puns. I love gardening. Obviously, I love garden puns.
A little over a year ago, Mountain Man and I decided to try and measure exactly how green our thumbs were. The conversation went a little like this:

Mountain Man: How awesome would we be if we could grow all of our own food?!
Me: We would be so completely awesome!

The scientists that live inside of us started gathering research. We bought tons of books, read them several times over, scoured websites, and clipped tons of magazine articles. Little did we know, there are about a bazillion gardening methods out there, and about as many gardeners putting their own spins on said methods with claims as to why their gardens are the absolute best. So, we tried a little bit of everything. 

Monty snooping around our new beds.

Our first project, we decided, was to build some raised beds (which really ended up being slightly elevated beds, but I digress). In these beds, we tried square-foot-gardening. They were a big fat flop, a horticultural graveyard where we sent our plants to die. This was probably more due to the fact that we used cheaper than cheap top soil to fill our beds. We didn't know any better. 

• Lesson one learned: high quality soil is a must, no matter the endeavor.

Blueberries.

We started some seeds, and bought several seedlings. I personally set out to have a successful container garden. In containers we grew blueberries, bell peppers, carrots, jalapeno peppers, tiny fairytale eggplants, onions, rosemary, tomatoes, some succulents and, my absolute favorite, a lemon tree that I scored for half price (among other things I may have failed to mention). 

The birds ate all of our blueberries as soon as they ripened, before we got around to picking them. We had several successful bell peppers (orange ones!) that made for very delicious fajitas.  I transplanted the rosemary to the graveyard, where it died. I killed my poor succulent via over-watering.  Our onions never really took off, but we had more eggplants than we knew what in the heck to do with. I mean, the things were practically coming out of our ears! I scalped the carrots, thinning them too early and way too much. Needless to say, they flopped. We had several successful tomato plants, and grew potatoes in tires. Tires! Who knew?

Potato tires.

Mountain Man took over just about all of the backyard gardening duties, while morning sickness took over all of my activities in late March. So, the backyard is now his garden-baby, with one exception. My meyer lemon tree. 

We harvested probably eight lemons, and ate all of one of them. Hey, I was super pregnant. I can't be held responsible for what I refused to eat. The tree has been hanging out in our kitchen window as of late, hiding from our freak North Texas winter weather. We move it out onto the front porch when it's sunny and warm (did I mention the tree is potted, and small?) As we forge ahead to year two of lemony-ownership-goodness, I'm super excited to see how many out of this fresh crop of baby lemons gracing the branches make it to my tummy.

Baby lemons.

 
I have one other window perfectly suited to indoor growing. I also have, oh I don't know,  somewhere in the ballpark of five hundred empty formula cans that I plan on creatively container gardening with. I'm thinking window herb garden. The cans aren't exactly metal. They're more like shiny, painted cardboard (not unlike the construction of cans-o-biscuits), and may or may not hold up to the abuse of gardening. Expect to see this project as it heads underway in future blogs.