My love for flowers comes from my love of the garden, and I can't help but share all this wonderful natural goodness with you this gardening season 2022! I thought it would be fun to share my suburban hobby gardening adventure this year to provide encouragement and inspiration particularly if you find yourself in this category too. I learn from many skilled gardeners online, so I'm not so much teaching gardening as I'm just sharing my experience, learning (and messing up) as I go right in my regular suburban backyard.
Catch up here with Week 1, Weeks 2 & 3
Garden Remodel
So much progress has been made in the garden. I finalized the layout but only after I made a mistake in what I thought was the final plan. Turns out this updated will be better. I am adding a winter squash bed that was supposed to run the enter width of the new garden. Except my measurements for the new bed only went to the width of the existing footprint, leaving it about 5 feet short. If I didn't wait until the last minute to take measurements and purchase the stone the day before the soil was delivered, I could have made the bed longer like I planned. But this extra little space will be perfect for my dahlia wash bin tub planters and my grow bags for potatoes (more on those below!)
The beds are filled with soil! After two days of shoveling and wheelbarrowing 3 yards of soil, the existing and new beds are ready for planting. My mom graciously helped me transplant some existing perennial herbs into their new places in the garden, and I jumped right in and planted some cool season crops: beets, carrots, turnips, baby bok choy, parlsey, mizuna, kale, lettuces and swiss chard. Somehow I forgot I didn't have radish seeds, so I plan to get some this week and plant right away.
Next on the agenda: complete the stone edging and pathways before summer planting begins around May 20 here!
I'm growing potatoes!
I get so many gardening ideas from people I follow on TikTok. Now I'm seeing gardeners plant potatoes in grow bags. I only heard about grow bags until this year, but apparently the bag's material allows for more airflow to the plant's root system, and the smaller size makes it easy to move around or grow even in small spaces. I had a half a bag of potatoes from the store that sprouted, so I'm like why not? After watching a couple YouTube videos on potato growing in grow bags, I hopped onto Amazon and bought a pack of 5 gallon grow bags. I read that each potato needs 2.5 gallons to grow, so each one of my grow bags can grow two potato plants, each plant producing 5-10 potatoes! Potatoes are such a basic household veggie that stores well, and I feel like I'm actually growing food to feed my family.
Suburban Hobby Garden 2022: Week 1 (The Past and the Future)
Suburban Hobby Garden 2022: Weeks 2 & 3 (Starting the Garden Remodel and Dahlia Tubers)
See you next week!