Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Green thumb

I would love to have a green thumb, but despite lots of effort, my thumb tends to be more brown, I can kill hardy plants quite easily.  Despite my numerous failures, I have had some success and every spring I try again. 
My successes to date:

My rose bush, despite being cut down to nothing the first year or two by the deer, it has survived and looks like a real rose bush, though a "real" gardener might say it needs to be pruned, I love it, it produces roses and is ALIVE. 
I planted this forsythia five years ago and it now finally looks like a bush and not just a few sparse sticks, FINALLY!
butterfly bush I planted last summer which is still alive and looking good, I almost lost it last August when we had no rain, but somehow it survived and I am so excited that something I planted is still thriving and looks like something after just one year, i should have tried one of these years ago.
This is my fifth attempt at growing a hydrangea, they are favorite of mine as well as the deer who have eaten attempts 1-4 to death.  I religiously sprayed to keep deer repellent on this plant last summer and I am overjoyed to see that it has grown back and I hopefully will have flowers this summer though I don't know what color.
I have learned that growing flowers can be an exercise in delayed gratification as well as patience and persistence. The rewards sometimes take years to receive and for some of my plants I am finally reaping the rewards that I sowed years ago.  My few successes have given me the hope that my ultimate green attempts will be successful.
  I am trying this year to grow some fruits and vegetables, last year I just fed the deer.  This year I am in it to win it.  A couple of weeks ago we built this:


a raised vegetable bed
I also planted along the fence:
we have planted strawberries, lots of sunflowers, pumpkins, and our blackberry bush and so far so good (the Rose of Sharon that are at the fence posts are another success story)
pumpkin seedlings that have sprouted by the fence
the start of a salad in our raised garden
Our blackberry bush, it has already been chopped down once by the deer when the net slipped off but it is still good size and hopefully will give us some fruit this summer it is by the fence
Cantaloupe seedlings, we spend a small fortune every summer on cantaloupe and hopefully this summer we will have some of our own in our own backyard they are in our raised bed
our strawberry bushes, we have six, and fingers crossed we can get some berries they are along the fence
we also have peppers, carrots, and beans in our raised bed
The garden will hopefully also be a great lesson for the kids and hopefully will encourage them to eat more vegetables.  So, so far, so good, fingers crossed we will actually have something to harvest and all my hard work will pay off, only time will tell.  Our next project is a rain barrel to keep the garden growing this summer.

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