Learning as I go.

Category: New Gardener | Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2006 3:14 pm

The spring of 2005 was my first year gardening and I fell in love with it. I have the "gardener" gene from my mother. She is a wonderful gardener. All she has to do is look at them and they grow.

Since I was little , Ive tried out my green thumb. I remember when I was about 5 , I stole some green pepper seeds and planted them in a little hidden corner of our back yard. I watered them everyday and weeded the little area. Well, because noone knew what I was doing, there was noone to tell me the diff between my little sprouts and weeds. I weeded out my seeds! LOL. I was heartbroken when I saw what I had done.

Over the years, Ive killed many a rosebush. I gave up on growing about 6 yrs ago.

This year I wanted to grow a herb garden. My hubby was so understanding. We spent hundreds on soil, plants and supplies. We even built a three step planter. Its about 6 foot long and each "step" is three foot wide. The first and smallest step is one about a foot tall. It was for my herbs. The second "step" is about two foot deep and the top one is 5 tall.

Next to it, I have my shade garden. Since I love tropicals, I planted tons of elephant ears (only one didnt rot). Im part of an online comm called freecycle - freecycle.org . I recieved several free plants from there and alot of elephant ears.

My flower garden was shaped like an "L" in my yard. I have a banana tree that was suppose to be a mini..... its not! But its putting out babies like crazy. I got it as a tiny tike early spring and its now over 7 foot tall and has put out 6 babies. Sadly Im going to lose the mother tree because its so big, I cant move it with me to La. My neighbor said he would take it. My landlord said he would cut it down if I left it. I dont have much of a choice.

I learned that you dont put Bird of Paradise in the ground if you dont want it to take over! LOL Its now moving into my nieghbors yard. I dont know how it will grow back but because of several nights of freezing weather, the whole thing turned brown so I cut it to the ground and covered it with mulch , its own leaves and plastic to keep the roots warm. I have to buy a large pot to tranfer it too so I can take it with me to La.

I have two Majesty Palms or so the tag said. I looked them up online and they are suppose to get huge but the tag said that they wont..... we will see! One of the palms had two babies on its truck. I seperated them from the mother plant. One died and the other I planted at my moms. Its so cute! Not even two foot tall and so bushy! Its doing better than mine!

I have a philodendron and its not so good. I cant seen to get it to grow! Its in a spot that gets full sun but is protected from the harsh FL afternoon sun. Now it has little white spots on the larger leaves.
I have to get a large pot so I can dig it out of the ground and take it with me.

So far winter has being terrible in my garden because I dont know what to do. When we got our first freeze watch, we covered the banana trees, and the palms with plastic. When I uncovered them the other day, they all had what looked like rot on them. The fronds from the palm had orange on the tips with white and black spots. I cut them all off. Now my palms look pitiful! LOL Oh well. Because of weather in its 70s they are growing back.

This spring I have to firgure out how to keep the catapillers off my garden. While I know most what them in theirs I dont want them in mine. My garden is for looks only. Those little boogers went through my garden like an all you can eat buffet! Herbs and all.

This spring Im going to try an all container garden being as we are renters not home owners. I just mixed my first container of plants. I have a fern tree and I added an asapargus fern from the ground into the pot next to it and a small cutting from my false heather. I put some false heather in with one of my palms. Those little boogers can grow!

I killed my lipstick plant.... I need to clean it out so I can use that pot. But I keep thinking I can get it to grow back....but the thing looks so bad! But on the good side! My ivy is trying to grow into the pot! LOL

I tried something this past summer. I threw abunch of bird seed down in the garden and it grew! Then in the fall, we had all kinds of birds feeding off them! My cats didnt know what to do themselves. HAHAH! It was so funny to watch. They were chased, attacked and now are just plain scared of any bird outside! It was great. Those birds gave them hell! We had a bunch of cardials hatching in our back yard this past spring and they are the ones that mostly terrorized the cats. They had done it from an early age when my cats were just kittens. When the door was open to the house and the cats went outside and the birds show up, they will come running back inside all crotched down! HA!

I need to transplant my sage.... its the only herb that survived the catapillers. <sigh> But on the good side, my mints came back.

I am chilling two rose seeds. I thought I would try my hand at them. Next fall Im going to try to grow cuttings from the two bushes I have.

OK, I am done for now!

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Gardenstew wrote on Mon Jan 02, 2006 4:01 pm:

I must say Denee, what an immensely enjoyable first blog entry :) A great sign of things to come. I'd say it will be quite a task to move all of your garden friends to LA, I hope they don't get road sickness lol.

I remember doing something similar to what you said about weeding out the 'wrong weed' when I was little as well. I was heartbroken :(

Best of luck with your new blog. I hope it serves as a great companion to you for years to come!

Pinkiered wrote on Mon Jan 02, 2006 7:26 pm:

Why thank you Garden!

I never thought I would be typing a garden blog! HA!

I hope my plants dont get motion sickness too!

dooley wrote on Mon Jan 02, 2006 8:50 pm:

I hope my herb garden does well. Last year earwigs attacked everything. Good luck moving your plants. California is a good place for plants. You need to get a book called "The Western Garden Book". It's a Sunset book. It's a good book. It tells you all about the different climate zones in California

Pinkiered wrote on Mon Jan 02, 2006 8:54 pm:

OH! No! Not LA, CA..... La as in Louisiana! So sorry for the confusion! We moved from CA two years ago and I have no desire to go back! HA! We are moving to Lafayette, Louisiana.

looking wrote on Tue Jan 03, 2006 1:30 pm:

A great read Pinkiered. We have difficulty here in Aust growing some types of herbs. Sage is OK as well as rosemary. Mint does well, but I have had great difficulty with oregano.
I too am new to gardening. Never really liked it before (too many weeds) but I am enjoying it now.
Cheers