learning to garden part 1

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David and I bought our first house in the summer of 2007, and for the first time we had some very small pieces of land to call our own.

In the beginning, the house was such a big project that we neglected all of the green spaces, and soon all of that green died.

It took a year, but I finally started thinking about the outside spaces, and how I wanted them to look. At this point, I still didn’t know anything about plants.

My first plan consisted of grass and asian jasmine. I didn’t even think about changing the shapes that were already there in mulch and plastic edging. And so, David and I, uneducated about anything green and living, set out to waste some money buy some scraggly, mostly dead, looking St. Augustine sod because the season was ending, with about 8 starts of asian jasmine. We put down the sod, incorrectly, and I planted the asian jasmine in the mulched area to the right. Most of the grass died and none of the asian jasmine grew, at all. I read that they were drought tolerant, so I didn’t water them… much.

The first plan obviously didn’t work out and I found plants from the big box store that I thought would be fun to grow. I also spray painted the pots that had come with the house an aqua blue. I started reading about how to take care of the new plants I put into the pots.

My dad gave me some Persian basil seeds from my grandmother in Iran, I bought a grape tomato start, and a Jasminum Sambac, which I loved because the scent reminded me of Iran and the Mediterranean.

The grape tomato grew and produced about 80 tomatoes total, even though I didn’t know how to baby it very well.

And I learned that bonsai are way too much work.

I didn’t figure out until later why my basil weren’t getting bushy on their own, but I was able to make delicious pesto from my first basil plant.

I started a miniature compost been in a plastic tub.

My step-mom gave me a catnip plant for Mojito to enjoy.

I learned about fish emulsion and it made my plants very happy.

My step-mom also gave me an Encore azalea, but it didn’t make it very long after I planted it in the ground.

I bought a mint plant and also started collecting rocks from home construction sites because I started thinking about the layout again, not just plants I found at the store that I liked at that moment.

I started reading garden blogs from gardeners in Austin, and started learning more about native, naturalized and drought tolerant plants. I bought a few Oxblood Lily bulbs from a vendor online, after seeing how beautiful they were growing for the garden bloggers. My passion started to grow exponentially, and I was excited about gardening more in 2009.

Related posts:

1. learning to garden part 2
2. learning to garden part 3
3. bowling ball garden bees
4. new plants and new garden design
5. shifting the blame

This entry was posted on Monday, April 5th, 2010 at 8:02 pm and is filed under furry child Mojito, garden, MrDavidPoe, our house, photos.