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Tuesday, June 05, 2012

A New Look at Green Thumbs!


Today I am showing you something completely different than I have ever posted on my blog before.  When I said "Green Thumbs" in the title, I am not talking about a green thumb from stamping!  I'm talking about a gardening green thumb.  Though when you think about that whole saying of having a green thumb I often wonder if someone actually had a green thumb from the vegetable stains.  I am not a gardener, I have never claimed to be a gardener.  And as I'm getting older any amount of gardening doesn't give me the warm squishies!!!  And speaking of warm squishies, there are sometimes some of them out in the garden too. I don't like any of them!!


This year we decided to make a gutter garden. I had seen them in an email that was forwarded to me last winter.  NOT a good time to start a garden!  But much to my surprise I remembered how cool it was and as summer approached I kept talking about it and how easy it would be to garden in one of them.  I had also talked for years about wanting raised gardens but that never happened either!!  So this year the gutter garden went up.  Now in the original gutter gardens they tell you to screw or nail them to your garage wall.  I didn't like that idea at all.  So the more I thought about it I figured we could "attach" them to the deck beams.  We (and when I say "we" I mean the hubby) cut boards and wedged them under the deck in front of the beams.  Then they were tie-wrapped to the beams.  The gutters were screwed onto a board and then the board was screwed into the vertical boards.  The gutters were also set in place so one end is 3/4" lower than the other (just in case of torrential rains!).  Once the gutters were up then they were filled with dirt and watered down.  Then the fun part, the seeds and seedlings.  The bottom row has table onions.   Hubby said that rabbits probably won't eat those.  So the leafier vegetables have been planted up higher.  

The last photo is of the parsley plant I had bought weeks ago.  It was starting to look a bit distressed and in need of fresh dirt.  It is now in it's new home and hopefully it will grow nicely.  I'll keep you posted on that.  In a week or so I will cut off all the ugly stuff on it but for now it needs to recover from the stress of being transplanted.  The gutters face south so they will get full sun all day long.  I hope that is a good thing!


I don't remember what all we planted.  I do know that on the top left is radishes and today when I went out to water the gutters I saw that they had already germinated.  There were little white roots coming off the seeds that floated to the top when I watered. UGH!  So I had to gently cover them all up again.  I'm hoping that there won't be a lot of weeds in the gutter gardens.  And bugs and other "squishy" things!!! LOL


We even talked about putting flowers in the gutters next year.  Maybe something that cascades down.  Or maybe we'll add more gutters to the other half of the beams.  The deck is 24' long and we only used 10' of it for the gutters.  So far it's fun.  I'll let you know if the fun continues through the summer!!!


This was a nice and fun break from stamping.  I needed a day off to regroup and clean up my workroom too!

Thank you so much for visiting today,
Wanda

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wanda, I so-o-o love reading your blog and seeing all your neat stamping stuff!!! I should spend more time commenting because you have LOTS of great ideas and neat stuff!

This post today I just had to comment on as I would love to do some gardening, but we have so many darned rabbits that already eat my flowers and plants, having things like lettuce and herbs are just out of the realm of possibility, or so I thought(!!!), until I saw this idea!!!

My 23-year-old was home when I said, "I want one of these", and when he looked to see what I wanted now, his reply was"Dad won't put up gutters where we need them, what makes you think he'll put up those for you?".

My thought is that I know plenty of my high school students would be happy to help me put up a gutter garden that they can watch, and I can grow a few things I could use in my school lunch program in the fall--radishes, onions, herbs, and possibly some leaf lettuce!!

I am so glad you shared this idea with us!!!!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!

Linda Larson
WDM Iowa

Anonymous said...

What a neat idea, Wanda.
We have 8 large pots on our balcony. There are tomatoes, cucumbers, chives, and the rest flowers. It is fun to watch things grow. It will be interesting to hear how it all went later this summer. Great idea!

Joan
MN