Up with Veggies!

Several Mondays ago, I whipped out my hammer and hodge-podge of random upholstery tacks and nails and went to town on a pile of natural burlap and a plywood scrap (from our friendly neighborhood Habitat for Humanity ReStore for $3) to make my Vertical Garden dreams come true:

My wonky little scrap of plywood.

Supplies: nails, hammer, burlap.

Technique: eyeball your burlap strips (double thick) into thirds and tack up some pockets.

Editor In Chief supervised my lazy math and reminded me that a  ruler or tape measure would have been handy.

I tacked up my vertical garden slab, but none of my plants were robust enough to plunk them into the burlap. Remember my little basil and tomato sprouts?

They were sweet little munchkin nubs when I built the Vertical Garden.

I waited impatiently for weeks (over a month!) for them to get bigger. And today I decided they were finally ready. But I had 6 pockets in my vertical garden, and only one tomato and 2 little basils had actually survived my ignorance and instruction-non-reading, so Les and I went to the Farmers Market to get them some friends. 

This afternoon, I gave Tomato his own room and transplanted his basil brothers to one of The Pockets.

My how you've grown!

Yay! You were just seeds a couple of months ago! And now you look like food!

Here's my Vertical Garden with all of her pockets stuffed with herbs and stuff!

1. Upper Left: The only 2 green bean sprouts to survive the Heat/Rain/Rain/Heat/Bugs of the last couple of weeks.
2. Upper Right: 3 different types of thyme
3. Center Left: The Basils!
4. Center Right: Rosemary and I think Lavender (crazily, I can't remember, and it smelled more like Rosemary to me than Lavender when I planted it)
5. Lower Left: Mint
6. Lower Right: Feverfew - pretty little flowers, and good for drying and mixing into tea for headaches, which we sadly get a lot at our house.

I'm hoping that by making this garden tall rather than low, it will get a lot of sun. I moved the whole operation to fit under the roof overhang, because I noticed that my tomato and basil leaves were turning a bit yellow from a little toooo much water. I want to be able to have a bit more control of their moisture.

Now, I'm sure there is a proper way to plant these bad boys. I know several of them spread like mad and may need to be moved into bigger containers. But I wanted to try this, since the whole thing cost a whopping $8 ($3 for the wood, $5 for on-sale burlap). It's an experiment, like most of these endeavors.

Oh! I also bought a 6-flat of green peppers at the Farmers Market, and planted them in halves of the Trader Joe's coffee cans I've been hoarding (with holes poked into the bottoms/lids for drainage.) I knew they would come in handy for something.

The other little starter pots are the beans that I haven't quite been able to give up on yet. They have slim signs of life.

I did have to give up on the peony bulbs I planted. Sad. They just never came up. So I assuaged my grief with these lovely little dahlias, grown by a more capable farmer, and transplanted into the pot I bought for the peonies.

In addition to my joy at finally filling the Vertical Garden, adopting some flowers, and using the coffee cans, I ALSO skipped to the car with this little beauty tucked under my arm:

My long-dreamed-about Meyer Lemon tree. Yep. I'm going to grow lemons on the porch. The grower assures me that they will fruit even at this sprouty age. She can grow up to 5 feet tall, and needs to stay indoors in the winter, but during the spring, summer, and fall, she should make us some lovely sweet lemons. Oh, be still my heart. If that actually works I am going to freak out with joy. Living in the Midwest for so long I forget that people actually grow fruit in their yards in our very own country.

Last but not least, I also gave my own dahlia bulbs a late-starting shot by planting this little guy who had courageously sprouted inside the bag that I was planning to wrap up and put into storage until the fall.

Come on up and join the Porch Party!

I'm super excited about these new plant friends! Keep your fingers and green thumbs crossed that they actually do their thing and I don't kill them off before they bloom/fruit/veg.