Garden Update

It’s growing! The garden is growing!!

Seriously so exciting. It’s so fun to see how much bigger the plants are since we planted them in our nifty homemade boxes :)

The tomato, zucchini and cucumber plants are getting so big! We’re going to have to figure out how to support the tomato plants soon…haven’t quite figured that one out quite yet…
Our strawberry plants are doing great too! We’ve even already picked a few strawberries…and they were sooooooooo tasty :) my cute little flower is doing well too – it used to only have one flower…now it has TWO!
See look! Strawberries!!!
Our carrots have sprouted too! They were hard to see, so I provided you with some helpful arrows ;)
Here’s my little herb pot. You can’t really tell, but they have been growing quite a bit too. I gave my basil a haircut, so that I could make baked parmesan spaghetti. Seriously. So. Good. I found the recipe HERE and I highly recommend that you try it. Mine even turned out just like the picture! That, my friends, is success ;)

I now have to figure out how to harvest my rosemary…Do I just take off the little leaves? Or do I pull a stalk up from the root? If you know, tell me, and save me some googling time ;) Because I really want to make garlic rosemary roasted potatoes. I know. They are as delicious as they sound.

Hopefully our little garden will continue to flourish! So excited for the tomatoes to come!

Our Summer Project

I am on a ROLL here people! Lots of blogging to do. After our very busy day in DC yesterday, we still had one more thing we wanted to get done before the day was over: Plant our garden!

This has been in the works for quite a while now. John has been wanting a garden since we’ve been married and we did dabble a little while we were in San Diego, but it was a small, relatively uninvolved effort. When we knew we’d be moving to Maryland, we decided we actually give it a shot. And we finally got everything planted yesterday.

But the really cool thing is that we built our own garden boxes! More like John built them, but I drilled a few holes and screws…and helped pick out the wood and stuff… ;)

We googled some plans and merged a couple of ideas before setting out to Lowes to get our lumber.

We borrowed my parents’ circular saw and cut the thinner pieces at home. Thankfully, Lowes cut the wider pieces for us, which was really nice. Once all of the pieces were cut, we got to building! We also got a brand new drill for the project (and besides, having a drill handy is perfect for all the awesome stuff we’re gonna build someday… ;) and so we were pretty excited to use the new power tool
Ohhhh yeahhhh ;)
It’s a box! It’s a box! It is a true testament to our geekiness when I think of how excited we were about a box… ;)
We then covered the bottom with slats for drainage. Doesn’t that just look awesome?!
Then we built the second one!
We made several trips back and forth to Lowes and Home Depot looking for this coconut fiber lining. The joke now is I call it that “stinking coconut fiber” because we had a hard time finding it in the size we needed and then I just thought the whole thing was ridiculous. Coconut fiber? Really?
Once we got the coconut fiber in there, we filled the boxes with dirt! John is so excited!
We ended up buying a really rich soil (by accident) that you are supposed to mix in with the regular soil. So that’s what we did, after another trip to Lowes ;)
My job was to mix. And then my hand got very dirty. Rawr!!
We ended up needing ONE more bag of dirt (and so another trip to Lowes – thank goodness it’s all so close!) and finally planted our plants as the sun went down. (and please try to ignore how scary my hair looks in this picture. Thanks ;)
And the garden is ready to go! We planted tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, carrots, green onions, strawberries and I transplanted a pretty flower plant that the Relief Society presidency gave me on Friday. In the red pot I have a little herb garden, where I hope to grow lots of basil and rosemary. We are so excited about our little garden! We really hope that our plants grow nice and big (and I hope I don’t kill anything. ha! ;)

Every once in a while I’ll catch John looking out at the balcony, admiring our handiwork. We’re pretty proud of our little set up! Hopefully I’ll be able to keep you posted on our great success ;)