Urban gardener: Take 1

Ok so I have been busy this summer. I mean busy. I made my kids do school so I could be a mean mom and I even pretended to like camping. I got to see all my lovely southern relatives this year which made my heart so full and happy I might tear up. BUT the thing that I did that was unexpectedly fun was plant my first garden. I had never grown anything except some sad bean plants in Mr Sacco's class in 9th grade. That was one weird dude. You just don't even know. So I had no idea about any of this stuff, but I like to take on huge projects that I have no knowledge about and just run with it. It's kinda my thing.

I started with seeds because my garden was going to be organic and nothing unholy was going to touch my precious plants. That and I am a bit of a control freak. So I bought some organic seeds for any veggie that seemed tasty with no real thought as to where and how I would plant them. I brought my seeds home and informed my husband of my latest scheme. He somberly reminded me that we have two of the dumbest dogs to ever breath air (WE LOVE THE DOGS OK?) and this could be very messy. Of course it took me no time at all to inform him we could build some planter boxes to deter the intellectually challenged canines. And of course my loving husband did just that. He built me the most awesome planter boxes this side of the Mississippi.

 I honestly thought two would be enough. I didn't want to get all crazy.... I decided to plant tomatoes, bell peppers, carrots, jalapenos and cucumbers. If you know anything about gardening you can see that I am already off to a rough start because that is way to many things for two planter boxes.

My friend on FB mentioned starting seeds so of course I googled that and got to work lining the windows of my house with tables upon tables of seed trays. I watched my little seedlings get bigger and bigger and not once did it occur to me there might not be enough room for all of them to live happily together. I was going to make it work because that's what families do! I may have gotten a little emotionally attached.

As predicted my "special" dogs started goofing off in the boxes before I could even get any plants in there. I mumbled curse words at them while assuring myself that once the seed babies were in there they would leave them alone. We had a number of talks about it. I was stern. I was sure they got the point. I was quick enough to catch the larger perpetrator in the act one time. Stupid $%&@# dog!

 Of course all of this buffoonery didn't stop once the plants were in. I planted my little darlings and made the mistake of fertilizing them because that's what the youtube guy who reminds me of my neighbor Jeff told me to do. My dogs went nuts on several occasions trying to locate the source of the wonderful fishy smell. They just had to have it. Luckily their ridiculousness only displaced some seedlings which is very important when it comes to carrots. Carrots need their space, man. You will get alien carrots if you don't properly space.

Here are my tomatoes that obviously need more room and some serious pruning.

This is the box with the carrots. You can see right away that there are way too many and its seriously hard to keep rows going when your 65lb chocolate lab decides to practice her dance routines in there. It amazes me that anything grew in that box.

So that is the first leg of my garden journey. Part 2 will be coming shortly because I know how anxiously you wait for my garden updates. If anything it will save you some work if you are starting a garden of your own. I hope this is enough to hold you over.