How Does Your Garden Grow?

This past Saturday our family spent the morning out around town pricing landscaping for our yard.  For some reason, our builder/landscaper did a HORRIBLE job and all but about 5 of our shrubs have died since we moved in.  We pulled one dead shrub up after about 2 years of living here and it was still root bound.  Not cool.  They're not dying as in we haven't taken care of them.  They're dying because they weren't planted well.  Anyway, we need to completely re-do the landscaping around your home (Yay.  Just exactly what I wanted to spend money on.  Yeah right.) so we were around town pricing shrubs, flowers, etc. 

We went to Southern Gardens and then to Lowe's.  Turns out, Lowe's has shrubs for like $1 cheaper per shrub than Southern Gardens does.  When you're buying as many as we are, that's a lot of $$!  We're talking an overall savings of about $40! 

While we were at Lowe's, we spotted some cute little kiddy garden things.  My plans were to start an actual garden this year, but with all the money we need to spend on landscaping, I just don't think it's going to happen.  Matt and I really want to teach LL that food doesn't just come from the grocery store and that families can do some self-sustaining just by a little work at home.  We had also talked about getting like 2 chickens at one point, but I just don't know if I want to do that anymore. 

I do still think that it's important to teach LL how things grow and where food comes from.  While we aren't going the huge outside garden route (at least this year), these little kids gardens are a good alternative for us! 

Here's what you do:

1- Pick your plants.

This VeggiTales one grows tomatoes and banana peppers (Matt's fav!)

We also got another brand that does watermelons and sunflowers.

2- Lay out your materials.

3- Put the soil pellets in the bottom of the pots.

4- Fill with water.

5- Wait 5 minutes.

6- Fluff up the dirt.

7 - Hire a planter.

Sorry!  I already hired the cutest one in town!

8 - Put the seeds in.

She did a GREAT job and had a blast doing this part!  Although we might have some tomatoes growing in the same pot as banana peppers - haha.

9- Cover the seeds with dirt.

10 - Cover the pots with the greenhouse cover and put in a sunny place.

11- Wait for your plants to grow!

I'll be sure to post updates as they start growing!