Garden Update

The general property needed a lot of heavy clean-up,
so this was the plan I used to do it. Garden Palanner

I began my very first full sized garden this year in early April and May. I had always helped out with my Dad's vegetable and herb garden when I was a kid, so I know a thing or two about plants - I just never have done it by myself outside of potted plants in my apartments.

Since starting all the work of ripping out the old garden/overgrowth & planting, it has really taken off and just grown like crazy. So I thought I'd share a little progress report here.













When I started, it was really out of control. (Pictured left and bottom) The previous owner had planted some kind of "wild flower" garden with "decorative grasses" and an herb or two. It was let go and things basically started choking each other out and it looked like a severe hot mess. My friend, Kao, came over and we ripped the entire garden out to the roots.

Kao kicking some grass ass.

This decorative grass "thing" took us 4 hours
to get out of the ground. Literally. We were both filled with more than a little malice towards it by the end.
There was quite the victory party when it finally came free.

I then got to do the fun part! Plant shopping and ordering!

I planned a rose and herb garden with a few decorative flowers.

I got all of my roses from Heirloom Roses.com

The miniature roses are Denver's Dream, Flawless, and Fancy Pants. The full size rose, currently potted and not in these early photos, is a David Austin Charity rose.

My herbs are from Rosemary House in Mechanicsburg, PA (http://www.therosemaryhouse.com/)

And the rest (Snap Dragons, Salvia, and Lantana) are from the wonderful people at Meadowbrook Farm over in Jenkintown, PA.

 In the bottom left photo, you can see how badly damaged the grass was before planting. I planted a lot of grass seed and spent some time cultivating it back to health. Spreading seed during a heavy rain, or right before, is a great way to keep the birds from eating it before it has a chance to get into the ground.

In the photo above, on the right, you can see just how tiny these plants were when I got them and first planted them. Fast forward at least a month, and I started seeing a ton of growth. I made many attempts to take photos that showed the grand scale of it, however, couldn't. I decided to do a youtube video and you can see in this where the growth got to. This was my first self filming ever, totally awkward, but you get the info about the garden, so be nice! :P

And since then I've had a great number of beautiful photo opportunities in the garden.

And Finally, another youtube video covering just how large my garden has grown. We've been getting a lot of rain over the last months. Not all day, every day, but the kind that rains at least a little bit almost every day or every other day. I haven't had a lot of time in the garden because of it, and because of vacation. Now that things are cooling off a little bit, the rain isn't so often, and I'm home more I have a lot of time to do the trimming and clean up. However, I wanted to show via youtube just how big everything has grown before I cut a lot of it back. 

I apologize for the poor quality of this video. :/

Anyway! I've spent this evening doing a lot of summer clean up. I'm going to give the garden at least a week to fill in a little more, and will have another higher quality video up soon. And definitely more photos.