Saving Money - Plant A Garden

I figured I would post this today in honor of Earth Day :)

I am a very avid gardener and have been for 3 years now. My husband (then boyfriend) started me on it and helped a girl with a black thumb produce tomatoes, eggplants, okra, black eyed peas, and many many herbs in my parent's back yard.

Fast forward to now, with 2 full garden plantings under my belt and various potted plants in between, we now have the best looking and most productive garden yet :)

 This is our vegetable garden :) We live in a small condo with a small back yard, so along the fence was the only place we could put it. It is 24 feet long and 2 feet deep, but in it we have as many plants as we could reasonably fit. The left starts with onions, then peppers and cherry tomatoes. The center bed is full of herbs (I am a big user of fresh herbs). The right bed is completely full of tomatoes. The pot at the right end is a camellia with juniper at the base.

Cherry Tomatoes

Beef Steak Tomatoes

The Tomato Bed

Golden Summer Sweet Yellow Peppers

Oregano

Pomegranate

Midnight Butterfly Bush

Daisy Gardenia

So, there is a little highlight reel of my garden :) I just wanted to put this up here to show that you really can garden anywhere. We have very limited space, but we have 20 tomato plants (3 in pots), 12 pepper plants, 12 different herbs, two camellia trees, a fig tree, a dwarf pomegranate tree and several vines and bushes (confederate jasmine, winter blooming jasmine, midnight butterfly bush, daisy gardenia, amaryllis, gladiolas, freesia, and mosquito geranium. Even typing it, this sounds like I must have a lot of space, but really it is a very small yard.

The really neat thing about a garden are all the personal benefits, and I'm not just talking about all the green movement good things like eliminating carbon footprints and whatnot. While those are obviously good things, gardening also is rewarding in a way that very few things are. It is a great feeling to know that the only reason that these plants exist is because you put the there and took care of them. I honestly can't fully describe what makes gardening so great. It really is something you just have to experience for yourself.

Another little perk if you have kids: If you ever want to get your kids to eat a certain vegetable, there is no better way than to grow it with them and let them see the growing process. Just a side note :)

If you want a deal to get you started on gardening with your kids, take a look at this offer from Auntie Annie's. IF you buy two Annie's products, you can request a free kid's gardening gift pack.

Or if you would like to start a garden of your own, here is a nice offer from Burpee Seeds. Click this link and fill out your info for a Free Vegetable Gardening Guide. It's a digital download they send to your email and it's full of tips and advice for beginning and intermediate gardeners. 

Anyway, if you have any gardening questions, I would be happy to take a stab at answering them or helping you find the answer if I don't know it. Just ask and I will see what I can do :) I hope we all can do just a little bit, like starting our own home garden, to help make our world a little better for the following generations. I know it sounds hokey, but it really is important and we should do whatever we can to help. Just one small gesture, like gardening or recycling, if done by us all, we would fix so many of the problems we now face.

Please do your part to make the world a better place :)