Now the hard part begins – how do I keep everything alive?

At the start of this project, I was nervous about this part as I planted a lot in a short amount of time so the upkeep felt overwhelming. I decided to start with some YouTube videos to get a general idea:

These videos were very helpful, but what really helped was the PictureThis app – I swear it’s just that good that’s why I’m mentioning it twice.

The app allows you to save all the plants uploaded into the app and it gives you a detailed breakdown of when to water, how much to water, and when to fertilize. The app even allows you to set reminders to water and fertilize and a monthly checklist – game changer!

Another amazing feature of the app is the diagnostic tool where the app identifies any issues with your plants and provides you with tips to remedy the issue.

With all this new knowledge (not sure how my brain is storing it all) I went to Costco’s garden center to get the goods. I will admit I didn’t do any research in this part I just let go and let the garden centre tell me what I needed.

Now I just need to follow the watering and fertilizer schedule that I have set up in my app and hopefully, we will see some beautiful flowers and delicious herbs in no time.

Day 3. I was pretty confident in my abilities to garden as the last two days had gone so well, but I spoke too soon.

The area I wanted to plant the perennials is riddled with weeds or at least what I thought were weeds. So naturally I need to sort out this issue first before I started planting. For the last two summers, I have ruthlessly pulled out these weeds because they looked so bad and so out of place as there was no rhyme or reason to their placement.

But every single year they came back in full force. So I did some Googling and found the app PictureThis and not to be dramatic… IT SAVED MY LIFE.

The app allows you to scan pictures of the plant in question and it will identify it for you and provide you with all the information you need from care instructions to fun little facts.

I got to scanning and learn that the “weed” that kept returning was Lily of the Valley, a somewhat invasive plant that spreads rapidly and is nearly impossible to get rid of. So back to Googling – where I learned that you have to dig out the roots and then douse the area is weed killer.

Now this part is where it all goes off rails. It took me nearly two hours to get out the roots of the plant.

It felt like the roots just kept coming. No matter how deep I dug there was more and they were all over the garden bed. But alas, with some patience and blood, sweat, and tears I got them out. Or at least I think I did, we won’t really know unit next year. And for good measure I sprayed enough weed killer to eradicate a valley of weeds.

After the whole ordeal, I decided that I need to take a break and plant the perennials the next day.

The next day, it was easy work. I watched a quick video before I got started:

And I did the work. Planting them was the easy part. The hard part will be seeing if they actually growing. Fingers crossed.

Day 2! Today the goal was to build two garden boxes I got from Giant Tiger for a steal of a deal.

Note: Just a note of caution here, please don’t buy these planters until you read ahead because disaster struck.

Then once my garden boxes were built it was time to plant the vegetable and herbs. So naturally, step one was to build the garden boxes. In my house, I’m nicknamed Bob the Builder so I got to work and after an hour or so I had two beautiful wood planter boxes – or so I thought.

For the garden boxes, I purchased chives, parsley, dill, and romaine lettuce because they seemed the most likely to survive the wrath of a new gardener.

To achieve this task, I downloaded the app Planter: Garden Planner to help me sort out the distance of my plants. I decided the best choice would be to put the chives, parsley, and dill in one planter and the lettuce by itself in another. So I poured in my dirt, got out my mini-shovel (I am sure this has an actual name, but mini-shovel is cuter), and started planting. I have found the actual process of planting to be quite easy. I have learned a few tricks though that have been helpful for a beginner like me, but the most important was to rough up the roots before planting.

And I was done! Or so I thought. Even my lovely elderly neighbor came out to tell me how happy she was to see some growth in our backyard finally. I was on cloud nine if you will. After such a hard day of work, I went inside to relax.

That afternoon, I went outside to admire my work to come to find one of my plant boxes collapsed. Thankfully, the herbs survived the calamity and the lettuce box was entirely unharmed, but my bank account cannot say the same.

Prior to this project, I had contemplated buying a garden box from Costco. It was a beautiful plastic Keter brand garden box that would have looked so nice in my yard, but in an effort to be more financially responsible, I decided to go with the more budget-friendly option. But look where that got me? So I took this as a sign from a higher power and got in my car and headed to Costco.

One garden box, and one hotdog later, I was home and ready to build my third garden box of the season. With the new garden box built and the plants replanted I was ready to watch my little babies grow.

I gave them a good water, tucked them in for the night, and went to bed and had nightmares of every garden box in the 20-kilometer radius.

Hopefully, day 3 goes smoothly.

Can anyone out there do anything without music? I sure can’t. So naturally I needed to curate a Spotify playlist to listen to while I am out there gardening my heart out. Feel free to check it out:

While I love my gardening playlist, I am sometimes not in the mood for music but rather a podcast. Check out some recommendations below:

National Parks After Dark:

Dark History:

The Basement Yard:

Stolen:

The Anthropocene Reviewed:

Happy gardening and happy listening, my friends!

Yesterday I descend on, what felt like, every plant store in the city to get plants and herbs for my garden project. I am somewhat of a house plant aficionado, but when it comes to outdoor plants I know nothing – quite literary nothing. So equipped with nothing more than my phone and the internet I started buying.

First I started at Costco. This seemed like the cheapest place to get plants. And while I was right, everyone and their mom were out buying plants. I have a bit of an issue with crowded places, but Costco especially gives me immense anxiety. I don’t know what it is; maybe it’s the giant carts (I am only 5 feet), the neverending isles of products, or something they pump into the air, but I knew we had to get in and out quickly. Thankfully, I went in with some sort of game plan – I needed 3 creeping juniper plants and a Roma tomato plant.

The Roma tomato plant was easy. It was sitting right at the front waiting for me. The biggest question was which one to get. I don’t know what makes a good tomato plant so out came my phone – check for bugs, check the leaves and stems, and go smaller. Then I read I needed to re-pot it so I added Walmart to my list. Next to the creeping junipers, and this is where it all went astray. Did you know there are about 7 million types of cedar-like bushes/trees? So after shifting through what felt like the entire boreal forest, I found the creeping junipers. Thank god for good people because this WONDERFUL lady must have seen my struggle as I pulled out every single creeping juniper that Costco had to offer and stared at them. I tried to Google how to pick one, but the internet just kept showing me results on how to prune them and what to do if they go brown. I was close to leaving and not achieving my dreams of a beautiful lush front yard with cedars plenty. But the angel from heaven helped me pick three of the best plants and gave me some tips for care including watering them multiple times a week until the winter and covering them with burlap before the first frost. So check! Costco done.

On my way out, I impulsively bought a Table Basil (which I don’t think is any different from regular basil) and a bag of 9.97$ perennial that is labeled “Butterfly Blend” because who doesn’t like butterflies? So now add that to the list.

Next was Superstore, as I heard (from my sister) that their herbs and plants were the cheapest. So off I went and found what I needed. My experience at Superstore was easy compared to Costco. grabbed parsley and chives for my garden boxes and a couple of bags of soil as I can only assume I’ll need that. I also wanted to plant hostas in my backyard, but I wasn’t 100 percent sure where to get them, but as if it was meant to be, the Superstore employees had just put out a whole pallet of hostas so I grabbed three.

Next, I need to find a hydrangea bush. Finding it was easy enough, but the tag was about as large as a high school history textbook and it had a whole lot of lingo I didn’t understand. Hardiness? No clue. Zone? Like school zone? Unfortunately for me, Superstore was all out of angels from heaven to help me, but thankfully I had Google. A quick search of “how to read a plant tag” showed me everything I needed to know. I decided to go with the Limelight Hydrangea for a few reasons:

• Blooms: Summer through Fall
• Hardiness Zone: 3 to 9
• Exposure: Partial to Full Sun

With barely any more room left in my SUV, we headed for one more stop – Plant Ranch, a locally owned plant nursery in the city. Here I wanted to get some romaine lettuce and dill weed. I grabbed what I needed and I was out of there. Armed with my goods I was ready to plant, right?

As a side note, to create this blog post I ran into one issue – my images were too big. Who knew? After some Googling, I came across TinyPNG, an online tool that compresses photos. So if anyone out there has these same issues, rest easy TinyPNG has your back!