The Creative Plantaholic

My biggest achievement in 2017 was getting this garden started and providing food and beautiful flowers for a home that had been without a garden far too long. One of my friends had a yard that had been neglected for years and had lots of buckthorn and other nasty weed trees. It’s been a slow progress but we were able to start to turn things around with almost no budget. Perennials were donated by many of the neighbors and I’m hoping the plants I transplanted last spring will be starting to flourish this year. 

I was working at a garden center that summer so I was able to get lots of discounted compost and mulch and seeds. I started peppers, herbs, and lettuce inside then visited a local plant sale for some more starter veggies. A few were also adopted from the compost at work, like the sad tomato in the pot that still provided us with lots of tomatoes. I found lots of rocks around the yard and started lining the path with them. 

We transplanted raspberries from a neighbor to start a patch along the fence instead of the black walnut trees that had been trying to grow there. A coworker gave me a comfrey plant to use as fertilizer for our veggies (comfrey makes good compost tea or just a mulch) I planted the comfrey in a patch of bad soil that had mostly lily of the valley and some weeds and it started to take over. 

Once the side of the house was cleared of weeds we planted rows of tall zinnias, cosmos, and tithonia/ Mexican torch flower along the side of the house. The torch flowers will definitely need to be staked next year, they got taller than me and a rainstorm knocked them down. They made endless cut flowers and brought bees and butterflies until frost. 

We got more herbs than I knew what to do with. Chamomile, rosemary, thyme, sage, mint, oregano, chives, and I would have had garlic but a squirrel stole it and put a black walnut in its place cause squirrels suck. 

There was a lot of zucchini bread until we had a weird cold wet spell at the end of August that rotted a lot of my crops. Carrots and lettuce did awesome, only bothered by an aphid infestation which I brought home ladybugs from work to take care of. My peppers were small due to less than ideal sunlight but they were sweet and delicious. A strawberry patch was put in and a netting had to go up to protect it from critters.