Gardening is a new found love.  I really got into it when my mom moved away and I moved into her house.  It was either maintain her garden, weed a little bit, and get some veggies out of it OR weed a big space of dirt and get no veggies.  I think the choice was clear.

She has a thumb so green, it’s practically neon.  I’m not so day-glo just yet, but I have learned a thing or two.  For today’s Blogger, May I prompt, a list of 10 things, I’m sharing how to easily make your own garden a reality in under an hour in 10 easy steps.

1. Find somewhere to put some plants.  Got a little space in your yard?  Is it sunny?  Great!  Next step.

2. Go and buy the plants.  I’d love to start my plants from seed, but that requires a lot of forethought.  I wasn’t invested in the garden enough to start them in January, and if I planted most of the plants now, they wouldn’t start producing until like..October and ain’t nobody got time for that.

If you’re like me, Home Depot will be sold out of cherry tomato plants and you’ll have to go back to buy more plants.  Much fist shaking happening at Home Depot.

(Okay, this part may take over an hour in and of itself.  I can never decide how many tomatoes I want or what kinds of herbs I think I’ll need/don’t have seeds for.  Don’t count this against the hour allotted!)

3. Weed the garden space one last time.  You probably will have done this two weeks ago and then gotten a handful of frosts, so you couldn’t put plants in yet.  Frost will kill a new pepper plant, but apparently nothing kills the spiky weeds in my garden that attack me to no end when I try to eradicate them.

Optionally, you got lazy and the frosts were a coincidence. #BlessingInDisguise

4. Figure out where you want to put your plants.  Don’t put the same plants where you had them last year.  Crop rotation, soil fatigue, gardening terms here…

This took me a while because I wanted to keep like plants together, save room around the edges for beans and peas, not forget about seeds I wanted to plant, and keep in mind where everything was last year.  I went through a few different configurations.

5. Plant!  I mean, there isn’t much to say about this step.  Dig a hole, drop the plant in, cover with dirt.  Ta da!

6. Discover more little weeds that need to just.die.already. Pick them and vigorously throw them anywhere but inside the garden.

7. Give your plants a little food.  My mom recommends Miracle Gro plant food.  I happened to have Osmocote from my Christmas stocking, so that’s what I used.  This will really help to get them started off on the right foot (root?) and get them to grow big and strong.

8. Water.  Gently, por favor!

9. Do a little happy dance.  Realize you forgot to leave a space for the cherry tomatoes.  Curse Home Depot a little more.

10. Marvel that it only took an hour.

Have you ever planted a garden?  What’s your favorite thing to grow?