Green Thumbelina

Bonnie, my little garden destroyer, I mean helper. Actually she just likes to roll around in the dirt. I think she wishes she was a black cat.

A project that my mom and I have been talking about for months was finally put into action in April. We started a garden. We're doing a few "landscaping" projects but the main focus was the herb/veggie/fruit garden. So here are some pictures of it's fruitful progression. ;)

so many decisions. We opted for the Miracle Grow Organic Choice.
We also used this compost.


I had originally wanted to build the raised beds, but materials and assistance was not available in the time frame I wanted, so I caved and went the easy/cheaper route. Our raised beds were purchased from Home Depot. They went on sale so I got 2. My mom only wanted one, but after planting everything in the first one, we realized we would need two so everything was spaced nicely. So I went and got a second one. Now she wants more! If you are able to build a bed (it's much more satisfying) here are some references Home Depot , Sunset, eartheasy.

This is another little pre-garden project we did in a jiffy.

We planted Butterfly weed, aka milkweed which is the larval food of monarchs and queens. Literally a week after we planted them, they were completely eaten by monarch caterpillars.

It was pretty exciting, even though they looked pathetic with NO leaves. But I'm happy to say that all the caterpillars have moved on and our milkweeds are doing great.

List of butterfly attracting plants.
Native butterfly gardening.
Good info on butterfly gardening.

Ok moving on.

This picture was taken about 10 days after initial planting. What's in the box you ask?

From front to back.
Starting with the Left column: Strawberries, Spinach
column 2: Sweet Basil, Lemon Basil, Thai Basil, Stevia
Column 3: dirt w/ cucumber seeds/sprouts
Column 4: Thyme, Cilantro, Ichiban Eggplant, Black Beauty Eggplant.

This picture was taken 2 weeks post planting.

This is my niece and not-so-good helper. :( She likes to step on the garden bed and knock over my potted seedlings. Ohwell.

This is about 3 weeks post planting. You can see the cucumber plants just to the right of the basil. I planted seeds and never thought they would grow. Well let me tell you a little story about cucumbers...they GROW FAST!!

Again up to no good.

This is what my/my sister's arms looked like after installing the second raised bed. Can you tell who did more work? Put it this way, my sister gardened from a chair the whole time. :P

These are the cucumbers. We moved them into the new bed with the tomatoes and peppers. We neglected to install a structure for the to creep onto. Again not realizing they would grow so big so fast. They latched onto the wire cage for the tomatoes.


1 month post planting. At this point we added Parsley in between column 1 and 2 and removed the cucumbers. The Sweet Basil is HUGE! The spinach is coming out.

Black Beauties are fruiting!! 1 month post planting.

Cucumbers 39 days post plating and attached to their new home. I think we are going to need an extender soon. :/

Black Beauty 39 days post planting.

I'm super excited!

I will take more photos soon. I need to take some photos of the tomatoes and peppers. I'm grateful for the rain lately too.

Till next time.