Daddy D's Green Thumb

On Memorial weekend we filled our time with a visit to a blueberry patch where we could pick our own blueberries for such a cheap price.

That was all it took to get my husband (Daddy D) into an old hobby of growing a garden. On our way home from the patch, we stopped at Do It Best to look at plants that we could grow at home. We bought a couple of them, including some herbs and tomato plants. Once we got home all we could think about is where to grow our garden. It only made sense to grow it in the back yard- however we have 3 large dogs that roam the backyard and would be hard to get them used to another area. Derrick proposed the idea of doing it in our front yard between the house and the walk way to the front door. I immediately thought it was a horrible idea and shot it down quickly. I didn't want people stealing our food or messing with our plants, plus the idea of a garden in the front yard sounded tacky to me. It took about 2 days of his non-stop talking about putting the garden there, until I started coming around to the idea. We knew it would be a lot of work.

The first step was to till up the ground. Daddy D has a lawn business, so luckily we had the equipment available to us. It took about a full week to get all of the grass out of the area.

We then, by hand (because we could not find a tool to work well enough) pulled up all of the grass, and their roots, that was still left because we did not want it growing back. The little ones were very interested in helping!

After we pulled up all of the grass, we made trenches simply with a shovel, and added a small white fence to keep it more sectioned off from the flower bed that we were going to create around it. This was the worst stage of the garden because it was just a bunch of dirt, and not very pretty.

One by one the plants went in we have blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, corn, green beans, zucchini/squash, red and green bell peppers, Cajun bell peppers.. AND MORE!

We wanted to do something simple for the tiny flower bed around the garden so we bought some generic wildflower seed mix from Lowe's and spread TONS of it in the flowerbed area. We also added some mulch between the rows because it looked pretty and apparently its good for retaining water. Everything grew so much faster than I thought it would, and not too long after we had lots of green!!

Now our garden is very large, the corn is about 6 feet tall and the plants are starting to produce. The wildflowers are very tall and are blooming all over- makes for such a beautiful addition to the front yard, and always puts a smile on my face when I get home.

Best thing about a garden, it brings friends!!

Our Garden = Hagood Happiness!