Adrian: Amateur Gardener: Part 3

To catch up on this ongoing story, read these blogs first.

Adrian: Amateur Gardener
http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2013/03/adrian-amateur-gardener.html
Part 2.  Adrian: Amateur Gardener, Part 2
http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2013/03/adrian-amateur-gardener-part-2.html
Adrian: Amateur Handyman
http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2013/04/adrian-amateur-handyman.html


In part one of this ongoing series I laid out the ideas I had for putting in a garden.  In part two, I laid down the timbers, mulch, and bromeliads.  In the Handyman blog, I did a lot, but as far as gardening, I planted some coleus and vinkas. 

So now I want to update how the plants are doing.  This is kind of my first time planting a garden, so I wanted to be very careful.  Namely, I looked very closely at plants that could happily live in mostly shade.  Those happened to be coleus, vinkas, and bromeliads.  So how are they doing?  Lets look!

The coleus is actually blooming!  Once it got planted, and had a little bit of rain fall on it, all of them just started taking off.

All the vinkas started blooming really nicely as well.

The bromeliad's roots have really taken hold, and are doing really well.

 

 

And here's a shot of the bed on the left. 

I'm sure there will be another installment of the "Amateur Gardener" series.  I have a feeling I will be building two raised garden beds in the back.  Stay tuned. 

Adrian: Amateur Gardener, Part 2

Part 1.  http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2013/03/adrian-amateur-gardener.html

Well, in part 1 of this blog I laid down what I wanted to do.  I also posted some pretty impressive photos of other people's gardens.  I will say, that is what I would like the garden to be, but if it's anywhere close to that I'll take it as a victory.

So now, let's talk about what we had to work with.  The answer?  Not much.  The house wasn't exactly taken care of by the previous tenants, and they weren't exactly interested in gardening or keeping the house looking nice.  So all I had to start with was barren ground.  And in Florida that means lots of sand.  The whole property is shaded so that means I have to plant garden plants that don't like direct sunlight.  That means one thing.  Bromeliads.

The first thing I did was what my Grandfather taught me about planting.  He said to take your shovel, draw lines in the sand, and plan out where you want to put things.  I did that, making sure to leave room to access a control panel on the side of the house.

Once I had it drawn out, I planted some bromeliads.  They breed like crazy so my sister had plenty to donate to the garden.  I spaced them out, and had a perfect garden started. 

The next step was to lay out the boundaries.  I used landscape timbers for the border.  I cut them to where I wanted them, drilled holes out, and used 12 inch nails to hold them in place.  Here's the photos of my work up to that point.

It's small, but it's a good start.  It doesn't look that impressive without mulch.  Luckily, I have a friend of my Dad's who runs a wood workshop.  He was building a project with maple wood, and had a ton of shavings from it.  So he donated them to the garden.  Here's what it looked like after I had spread the maple mulch.

Once it rains the mulch will be a lot more packed down.  I know it's not much, but it's a start.  The big thing was getting borders and mulch in.  And the bromeliads won't take long to get a hold in the ground.  There will be more bromeliads before you know it.  I'll see about adding some more flowering plants in there later on.  I'm looking forward to writing part 3.  Who knows what might show up in the flower beds next?