Made in the SUN!

I’ve tried gardening through the years with very little success. My Louisiana-born grandpa had a green thumb, and so did my Arkansas-born dad. Mom does great with flowers.

Hubby asked me to put my original raised beds out of sight of the house. I guess he’d been traumatized through years by my scraggly looking efforts. 

I put a couple of metal beds behind our cabana, but the shade from the trees on the Natchez Trace in the summer kept it from being very productive.  The abundance of wildlife from the Trace didn’t help either.

Last summer, I consulted with Emily of Cedar Hills Gardens—she’s now been featured on HGTV’s Home Town and the most recent Mississippi Magazine in addition to other media—and she agreed with me that my best garden spot might be within sight of my livingroom.

I notified my oldest of my decision to put raised beds in his sun-loving native garden, and the process of gently removing most of those plants began in the fall.

The ground in my yard is mostly clay, so levelling the surface was a chore!  I worked on it from November to January, whenever I was in town and the weather was conducive.

Over the holidays, I ordered two 3’x6’x22” cedar raised bed kits from Eartheasy.com.  As a bonus, they were on sale! I pulled the boards out of the boxes and left them on the porch to acclimate for five days.

The beds were easy to assemble. I caulked gaps with silicon and put a clear organic sealant on the wood to hopefully increase the lifespan of the wood.

Then, following Emily’s advice, Hubby and I took our little Tacoma to Jackson’s famous Hutto’s Garden Center for Mama Hutto’s Raised Bed Mix. We bought 25 bags that day, in addition to their special fertilizer and quite a few plants.

Earlier in the week, I wandered like a vagrant around my neighborhood collecting fallen tree limbs. Now I dumped them in the bottom of the beds along with other yard debris and a pumpkin leftover from my fall porch décor. Then Hubby and I unloaded the special sauce dirt into the beds.

I was a little dismayed to see how well the dirt sifted down, down, down to bottom of those 22” tall beds.

I was able to almost fill one.

I went back to Hutto’s for another load of dirt (30 bags this time) to fill up the beds.

I was finally able to plant the beds March 1. I would’ve preferred to have had them planted by February 1, but a bout with the flu and several big trips out of town prevented me.

I planted by transplant cabbages, celery, broccoli, Big Boy tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, bell peppers, strawberries, mint (in its own pot) basil, parsley, fennel, lemon grass, and marigolds. By seed, I planted carrots, radishes, a lettuce mix that’s been mostly arugula, nasturtiums, and sweet peas.

A few weeks ago, I planted zucchini throughout the yard. A few have already been demolished by pests, but some are thriving. I’ve also just planted some Japanese sweet potato slips from organic potatoes I picked up at Whole Foods.

I joined Cedar Hill Garden’s Spring Club in hopes of gleaning wisdom and rubbing shoulders with people who have green thumbs. I did get some good advice from weekly Facebook Live interactions and one of four monthly field trips. I was either sick, crippled, or Bible quizzing for the other trips.

I enjoy having my garden close to the back door. I check on it constantly and live in fear of finding a tomato hornworm with half a plant down its throat!

Hubby loves to come home from work, eat dinner, and say, “Let’s go see the garden!” He and I are both constantly amazed at what consistent watering, monthly fertilizing, prayer, and SUN can produce from day to day!