I'm an Accidental Gardener

A post watered and nurtured by Rose.

For having the name Rose, you’d think that gardening would come naturally. I even worked at a Garden Center and Tree Nursery the summer before I left for college. Somehow, though, I had grown into adulthood with a #blackthumb.

· I killed Aloe.

· I killed Succulents.

· I even killed something called an Air Plant.

Eventually I gave up and just embraced the artificial plants and flowers that adorn my house. And I tried to fill my yard with very hardy perennials. #teamhosta

But then I became an accidental gardener.

Rose, just help me get what I’m looking for.

Not really looking for all my anecdotes on gardening? No worries. We can still be friends. Here are some quick links to get you to what you were looking for.

· The Long of the Story: Hear how I went from #plantkiller to #plantmomma

· Let Me Break It Down for You: Here are the real, uncomplicated steps of how I did it so you can, too.

· Get to the Point: So what? What’s the reason we should care? #wayharshTai… but I get it.

· Links to the Goods: Check out the links to the real stuff I bought and used in this story.

The Long of the Story

How is that a thing? Let’s rewind to June of 2020.

In Chicagoland we were in a full lockdown, and quite jealous of our family in the south who seemed to be weathering the pandemic with far less restrictions. So we packed up our family, snuck out of our neighborhood at 9:30 pm at night, and drove straight through to Hilton Head, SC to stay with some family for two weeks.

Side Note: Apologies to our neighbors just finding out this information. We promise, we quarantined for two weeks after we got home.

After breathing beach air mask-free for two weeks, we began our trip back home. This time, though, we did detour to one more family member’s home on our drive back. And there one of our family members did the unthinkable: she handed the kids a tomato plant and a banana pepper plant.

My immediate thought? Great. Now when I kill these things I'll ruin Christmas.

And so as we finished our trek home, I began madly searching up just what it was going to take to keep these plants alive. SHOCKING REVELATION: it was basically water and air. When we got home we somehow successfully transplanted them into the ground. And when they began producing tomatoes and peppers, my children transformed into those perfect Insta-Kids who ate the vegetables they grew.

My mind was blown.

So my interest accelerated from guilt-driven to curious.

Over the winter, I found myself reading more articles and blogs on simple gardens. And over the course of the next two summers our two little plants expanded into a few varieties of tomatoes and peppers. I also bought a hanging garden and expanded to herbs.

But in the summer of 2022, I had the audacity to plant a Zucchini plant. It’s so easy! That’s what my garden-gifted friends had said. But that f*ckig zuchinni plant WOULD NOT GROW. Now my grandfather turning over in his grave. His zucchini plants produced so many squash each year that the entire family would HATE zucchini by the end of the summer. So how was it that I couldn’t produce a single one?

It drove me down a path no one would have seen coming just a few years earlier. That fall, I took a soil sample to a local garden center to figure out exactly why my zucchini plant had failed to grow.

Turns out it was just the garbage soil our landscaper had used to fill in a landscaping bed. (We certainly hadn’t prepped it to become a garden when we originally designed it.)

My gardening gets elevated from chore to hobby

Before Summer 2023, I would not have called gardening my hobby. It was this thing I was excited about for a total of 30 minutes until I had to then water ALL. SUMMER. LONG.

However, with the diagnosis of dirty dirt, it suddenly ignited this curiosity in me. I spent hours researching what to do next over the course of the winter. I began organizing and ordering all the materials I would need.

Let me break it down for you:

First, I bought a raised garden bed.

I discovered the easiest way to deal with my bad soil was to not use it at all. I found this 8’ x 4’ raised garden bed on Amazon. While I was willing to purchase a kit, there are several plans to build your own from leftover wood scraps available online if you’re more handy than me. I quickly discovered I would also need weed blocker and stakes to hold the blocker down. In total, it took me about an hour to assemble the garden bed and weed blocker. (And I got to use my husband’s impact driver, which always makes me feel pretty powerful.)

I downloaded an app.

Of course I did. I’m a #millennial. I downloaded the Planter App. This simple app helped me to map out the best plants to plant in my raised garden. Including how to space them, when to plant them, and which ones to place next to each other.

I pre-ordered Plants.

I had actually attempted to purchase more than just tomatoes and peppers in prior years. But quickly became annoyed at how many different garden centers I had to visit to find interesting plants to purchase. Now perhaps I was (a) late to the game and they were just picked over, or (2) I had far too high of expectations of plant varieties. But through my gardening research I found that many plant companies allow you to pre-order your plants and seeds. So I placed an order in February on Burpee based on the garden map I had created in my app. And then I anxiously waited for them to arrive in early spring.

I found **high quality** dirt.

You’ll find I’m pretty quick to pull the trigger on just ordering things from stores and having them delivered to my house. So I had priced out having the number of garden soil bags I would need delivered to our door from Home Depot for about $250.

But as the snow melted and spring emerged, so did the garden center advertisements in our mailbox. One day I happened to actually read one on my way to garbage can, and discovered I could purchase one cubic yard of Vegetable Garden soil for ~$40 and delivered for an additional ~$40.

The day before Mother’s Day I had the dirt delivered and my husband – after a round of golf – spent a half hour with a wheelbarrow and a shovel getting the dirt from our driveway to the garden bed. (It pays to marry a former farm boy.)

I planted the plants.

On Mother’s Day, my 7-year old helped me plant all the plants in our raised garden bed. It took us about a half hour and we were pretty proud of ourselves in the end. He particularly like planting the seeds, which involved poking lots of holes in the dirt.

I putzed around.

After that, I just putzed around. Working from home has certainly allowed me the ability to do this. And the garden gives me a great excuse to get outside periodically through the day. Each morning, after I make my cup of coffee, I wander out to the back porch to water the garden and see the growth. And throughout the day I go out there between meetings and to check on progress. (Its amazing how you can actually observe growth after just a few hours once the plants get going.) And on evenings after a particularly hot day, I’ll give everything another drink. On Sundays I use some plant food especially designed for vegetables and herbs, just adding it to my watering can as directed.

Get to the Point

Listen, I’m not going to lie to you. Like any other hobby, you can definitely go down a rabbit hole with gardening. I like how this was actually a pretty low investment of my time to get set up, and honestly relatively low budget as well. I’m as shocked as you are that I’ve enjoyed it as much as I have. But there is something so gratifying about seeing these plants grow and eventually getting to eat them. And there is a sense of pride when I get to share my harvest with friends.

Oh! The cherry tomatoes in that Caprese Salad? Those came from my garden!

And what’s great about this hobby is that you can start small. If you’re not quite sure about it, start with some simple herbs on your countertop. It’s a low time and financial investment, and it means you’ll have fresh cilantro for your next batch of guacamole.

Links to the Goods.

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