Let me start by saying I have absolutely no clue about gardening. I thought when I bought my house I'd automatically grow a green thumb. No, actually it's dead along with several other things in my yard. It doesn't help that we're enduring a horrible drought here that's been goin' on a couple of years now.
My neighbor on the other hand, is a goddess of gardening. She works 2 jobs and is hardly ever home yet her yard looks soooo green and wonderful. Her plants are always so pretty. I was finally able to corner her the other day when I was pulling up from work. She had the day off from her 2nd job and was cutting the grass. I asked her how she kept her yard so pretty being in a drought. Her reply "Oh I really don't know how they're surviving. I don't water them...heck I really don't do anything but cut the grass." Yeah that was a big eye roller. Me over here struggling to keep something alive and she's over here just throwing her hair back thinking "Yeah I'm just that good". She continued to tell me she pays someone to come fert. her lawn and that she had prepped her flower beds with peat moss. Now as lame as I'm about to sound here, I'd never heard of peat moss.....I made a mental note to google that later. I had her come over to my yard to tell me what I had growing in my flower bed. I thought it was something I'd planted long ago trying to come up.....no just rag weed. Yeah, see...I told you.
So upon my googling of peat moss, I discovered this bad boy holds on to 20 times it's weight in water and that it releases the water as the soil needs it. BINGO. This is how her flowers look so good. Soooo....I'm figuring I need to go buy this and put it in my flower beds and give it a good watering.
Anyways, I came across some real cheap veggy seeds (corn, spinich, lettuce, rasberry, green beans, tomatos, green peppers), blueberry plants, and strawberry plants. I'm thinking I want to see if I can grow some food. I know I'm getting a late start but here in my area of GA we really don't start cooling down until about the begining of Nov. and even then it's not really frost worthy. I've been reading up on it all today and apparently this goes beyond digging a hole in the ground and putting something in it. Here in GA we had a lot of red clay but my yard seems to be more sandy. From what I read this may be a good thing. For those gardeners, I know I would till up an area, but would you suggest just keeping it sand and use fertilizer or adding some black soil into it? I was thinking with the peat moss, since we're in the drought, to put that on top. What do you think? Also, any other tips would be greatly appreciated as well.
I Think I'm Going To Take On A Garden
June 13th, 2008 at 09:15 pm
June 13th, 2008 at 09:16 pm 1213388219
June 13th, 2008 at 09:21 pm 1213388518
Also, make sure you check the instruction on the back of the seeds or on the plastic thing in the pot to see what the sun requirements are (full sun, partial sun, no sun-shade). Good luck!
June 13th, 2008 at 09:35 pm 1213389350
June 13th, 2008 at 10:08 pm 1213391313
June 14th, 2008 at 05:45 am 1213418717
Concentrate your efforts on improving the soil in a small plot, or even start growing things in a couple of pots. You want to learn, and not dilute your energies on getting everything right on a large scale.
June 14th, 2008 at 03:11 pm 1213452696