Your Garden Showcase, Carmen
I am very happy to share with you the start a fabulous new weekly segment that I would like to call, “Your Garden Showcase.”
For those of you who are knew to this site, this past year, I took a giant step and planted my own garden. Since then, I have been drawn to learning the tricks of the trade through others and not through google searches. Don’t get me wrong, I love google, but I’m pretty sure that google has never built it’s own garden. Am I right?! So I’ve become fascinated with real people’s gardens. How are they planted? Are they having the same problems as me? Have they figured out how to solve them? Are they as excited as I am to see everything bloom? What are they planting?
I have become so intrigued with just how your gardens are growing, that I will be sharing a garden a week right here with the rest of you. Because if any of you are like me and want to soak up as much gardening knowledge as you can, you’ll be just as curious to see how gardens across the globe are doing.
Let’s get into the swing of things shall we?
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My newly dear friend from the site It’s a Wonderful Life, Carmen, has decided to honor me with letting me showcase her garden with all of you.
Growing up, gardening was something that was very common to Carmen as her parents always had one. Her dad was especially into gardening and as she grew, he placed her in charge of helping grow the corn. At first it was whole rows and then it grew into sections, making sure there were no weeds and always watering. And he’s such a sweetheart that he even comes over sometime early in the morning to help her weed her own garden!
This is her first year trying out raised beds and she’s using Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening technique. It’s a very simple technique to follow and makes weeding incredibly easy. I wish I had known about it sooner!
Right now, things are a little on the quiet side in her garden. Her baby plants are still a little too small to transplant but she does have some beautiful plants! Her brother started a couple tomato and cabbage plants in Eastern Oregon that he has been so nice as to share them with her and so far, I’m happy to say that they are doing well! Her radishes are doing amazingly well, as you can tell from the picture and her bean sprouts look happy to be saying a warm hello to the world! I’m also incredibly jealous that she has sugar peas growing and growing wonderfully at that!
I just love how much her entire family is involved in the gardening that goes on at her house. She even gets her children involved by having them add scraps to the compost bin, by working the dirt, planting, weeding and of course, gathering. Carmen’s mom even gets in on the fun by helping can spaghetti sauce and salsa. What a wonderful helper she is! Seeing how much her family helps makes me so excited to be able to teach my own daughter the tricks of the trade!
Speaking of tricks of the trade, Carmen’s dad would plant nasturtiums at the end of the pole beans rows and she is following suit. I had to pull up my google friend and found that nasturtiums are great for keeping away some of the horrible pests that I’ve had hanging around. And they are beautiful! She also filled me in by teaching me that the blossoms are edible and that capers are nasturtium seeds! Who knew?!
The one thing that I never got to enjoy growing up because my mom had a dislike for, is the very thing that Carmen is most looking forward to… Dill! The smell of it reminds her of the heat of the summer and I can totally picture her walking by it, stopping, taking in a nice deep breath of it, smiling, and continuing on. It makes me smile just thinking about it! She uses the dill fresh to make pickles and dilly beans and then she dries the heads to add to bread, dips and sauces. It sounds delicious!
It’s people like Carmen and the wonderful garden that she keeps that makes me love gardening even more and makes me want to continue to learn absolutely everything I can about them.
Do you have a garden that you are in love with? Is there something you’re growing that has you excited? What are you planting? Do you have pictures? Would you like to share them and be showcased here? If so, leave me a comment or send me an email and I would love to chit chat more with you about it!
A very special thank you again to Carmen at It’s a Wonderful Life for letting me and all the rest of you enjoy her garden as much as she does.
Happy gardening everyone!
Tags: gardening tips, raised beds, raised garden beds, small garden spaces
That is an awesome looking garden! Wow! I want to do one eventually, but right now our yard is like a jungle with ridiculous weeds and plants and rose bushes. They’re ALL over and I don’t know the first thing about getting it all under control!
My mom has a tiny garden plot in her back yard that she pretty much only uses for growing tomatoes – and that’s because my sister could literally eat a tomato at least once a day and if you don’t grow your own… That gets expensive!!! lol
If I ever get anything of a garden going, I’ll let you post mine!
We just planted our first wee garden and I haven’t a clue what I’m doing! Wish I had heard of a raised arden before i tore up the backyard…they even look prettier:)
This is a wonderful series you are starting! I love gardening, and love ready stories about other people’s gardens, how they got started, what they are planting, what’s working, and not. Thank you for sharing this!
Thank you Stephanie!!!
You are so so sooooo welcome! It was honestly my pleasure :)
You’re right about the power of garden stories and sharing garden tips – I’ve allowed site visitors to upload their own garden stories on my site for some time now and there are some amazing things they’ve shared..douggreensgarden.com/garden-stories.html It’s one of the most popular sections of the site.
That garden is truly amazing. Having a lot of space for gardening is one great factor. However, having little space doesn’t really mean you can’t put up a garden already. I hope to see more about this garden in the future. I ca’t wait to see the products of your hard work!