How does your Garden Grow?

Growing up, every Mother's Day weekend the whole family spent a day planting flowers as part of my Mom's gift. As a result, I feel an uncontrollable urge to carry on the Mother's Day planting tradition. Conveniently, on our 2013 home goals a vegetable garden & sustaining said garden were among the listed ambitions. So after Belle hopped off the bus on Friday Hubby, the kiddies and I headed out to pick some plants.



After scouring the aisles of Home Depot for every variety of white flowers for the deck (post coming soon once I can clean all the pollen off the deck) we moved on to the veggies. Despite numerous pleas for a plethora of veggies, we kept our first ever garden simple and low key by purchasing one plant of the following:

• tomato
• red pepper
• green pepper
• cucumber
• squash
• zucchini

Further research had me fearing our proposed garden plot was too close to a tree (tree roots are rumored to rob plants of their nutrients). So to buffer against planting in the wrong spot, I opted to do a container garden this year. This way, if need be, we can move the plants around the yard until the optimal location is determined.

The configuration of the garden is as follows. Tomato and cucumber plants each have their own pots. The peppers share a pot, as do the zucchini and squash. The trellis is constructed out of garden decorations that the prior owners left behind. My hope is that the cucumber and squashes will grow up and over to help conserve space. To help ward off any bunny bites Hubby wrapped the whole garden in chicken wire. 

One of the great pleasures of Summer is cooking with fresh herbs. To keep them accessible, we planted oregano and sweet basil in the deck boxes. I was thrilled to discover "boxwood basil". These delicate miniature leaves don't need to be chopped up like the large leaf variety and the plant grows in tight formation mimicking the boxwoods I love so much! I happily snatched up two of them for the pots flanking the deck steps.

So that is our veggie garden: small and manageable. Hopefully container gardening agrees with us and the plants flourish. I am a little worried because after it was all said and done I noticed the bag of organic soil we purchased said "not for container gardening"…..ugh fingers crossed my plants don't die! Anyone else grow a veggies out of pots? Any tips? Lessons you've learned over the years? I can use all the help you can offer.