Ever since my husband and I moved out of an apartment and into a house (back in August) I've been trying to do more gardening. I had some back porch planting going on in the apartment, but the upstairs neighbors would throw their trash down on my balcony, so anything on the porch usually go trashed or smushed. A couple of my plants survived (included a really neat Pony Tail Palm tree I got as a wedding gift from a friend). But now that we have a yard and lots of room to put stuff, I've been trying to plant more.
Of course, we're still renting, so everything has to be able to come with us if we decide to move. Plus we don't want to make any lasting changes to the house (like installing raised planting beds or anything).
So, where does that leave the point of this blog?
It is spring soon! Which means plants need to go "in the ground." However, I won't be putting them in the ground. I've been trying to think of how to plant/have raised beds without actually having rasied beds. After learning about how to grow potatoes in a tall structure, I saw a picture of a woman growing potatoes in a tall laundry basket and I had a Eureka! epiphany moment. I could use laundry baskets as small raised beds! I already have garlic (almost 100 heads) growing in window boxes on my porch. A trip to Wal-Mart last night led to the discovery of $2 and $3 laundry baskets. So, this weekend I plan on planting a BUNCH of goodies. Pics to come.
Today I will leave you with this. One of the things I want to try growing are sweet potatoes. I'm not that big on them, but my mom and my husband both want them, so I'm going to try. Everything I've read about sweet potatoes says to start them like Avocados. So, last night I cut two sweet potatoes in half, stuck toothpicks in them, and suspended them in water in vases (who says you'll never use all those damn centerpieces from your wedding?) and put them out on the porch. It is already pretty warm here (into the 60s during the day) so I don't think I need to keep them inside and warm. I'll try to update with how they progress through each stage. As of right now, I'm in day one hehe.
Obviously this is my first time trying to grow them, so it is going to be an adventure. Actually, this is my first attempt at growing veggies in general, so I'm pretty excited to get it going.
Sweet Potatoes Day One:
Please ignore my messy yard. My new puppies took everything off of my porch and drug it all over the yard. This weekend that will be getting cleaned up, lol.
This year I also planted some stalk-type flowers for the first time that are now starting to bloom.
The snapdragons came in first, and are really beautiful and all different colors. These pink/purple ones are my favorite though. You really can't tell in this picture, but they have yellow centers, so they are a stunning mix of purple and yellow.
This week my Larkspur also started blooming. They were just this weird grassy plant (you can see the grassy part at the bottom) and then a couple weeks ago these long shoots started growing. The zoomed up very quickly and started popping out these green buds (which you can see on the stalk on the left). Then a couple days ago, I went outside and there were these georgous purple little flowers popping out. I couldn't be happier.
Coming up I have some tulips, gladiator alliums, and bearded irises. I might also have some foxglove, but the put kept getting knocked over, and I'm not sure the plant has recovered enough to produce. We'll see.
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