Streetlights and Greenery

My Urban Garden Adventures in Baltimore

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I thought this would die over the winter, but surprisingly enough, the pitcher plant is back! It popped up slowly but this thing is resilient. I bought another carnivorous plant this year. One of the coolest plants!

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This is my maypop Passion flower plant! These are awesome! I'm zone seven, and they work great in a container. They need something to climb, but if you have that you're set. They are awesome of you want something really exotic in your garden. Super low maintenance.

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More stuff from last year. With it being throwback Thursday, this felt appropriate. Also the cold has continued to prevent me from doing a lot of outdoor stuff so far.

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I bought this bird bath for five dollars last year. I decided to spruce it up, and I think it looks pretty good.

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They want to go out!

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The Dollar Store: A Gardener's BFF

If you like to garden at any level and you don’t shop at the dollar store you are missing out. They have so many gardening and yard supplies. They have garden tools, twine, and containers. They even have small trellises and potting soil! Yes the dollar store has potting soil!

Now like with every dollar store purchase, you are going to want to know what you are doing. Judgement is your friend when you buy anything there. I did buy small trellises for my beans. I also bought some netting. I would also buy some containers there too.

For me the potting soil wasn’t something I was going to take a chance with, but really, it’s just dirt. I don’t want to be a dirt snob, but I am used to the stuff I but. If someone ever tried it, definitely let me know how your plants turn out.

The bottom line is, please go to the dollar store if you haven’t already.

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Every good gardener needs to love them some farmer"s markets. This is the awesome Baltimore one!

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As stated before tons of garden projects! My tribute to Beyoncé in my garden.

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Is It Spring Yet?

So I don’t know about the rest of the world, but Baltimore has been facing some ridiculously cold nights. Climate change sucks! It was literally 32 degrees Wednesday night. This makes it crazy hard to decide when to actually start the outdoor garden.

Surprisingly enough, this area is a pretty great zone. It usually gets four seasons so it’s pretty easy to realize when to plant certain things. Also a lot of my stuff from last year is continuing to grow. Let here hasn’t been too much damage by this stupid frost!

I’m sticking in there, and so are my plants.

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The aforementioned wall painting! This is a before and, well during. The project isn’t complete yet, but you can see by these pictures how much work I have been putting into it.

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Yard Projects

While I do not consider myself incredibly artistic, I do consider myself pretty crafty. Yes, Martha Stewart and I would be besties. Anyway I find myself in this really weird place. Due to this weird weather, it’s probably not best to plant until May. Therefore, I have been stuck with this wanting to garden bug!

My garden has always been really pretty, featuring plants, but city yards can get weird. For instance, for the last two years I had to use a makeshift fence of chicken wire to keep my next door neighbors’ dogs out of my yard. This year is different. The fence can come down! For some reason this has given me a resurgence in the overall aesthetic aspect of my garden.

I have decided to paint a wall in my garden with a very colorful pallet. I am really interested in taking advantage of the vertical space my yard can offer, so I am going to start to experiment with wall planters. It has been a lot of fun, but it has also been hard work. At least it is taking my mind off the fact that I can’t really start outdoor seeds yet.

I have also been finding myself other projects. I have been working on a water feature for my garden. I even painted a pot! (This is big for me, because I usually don’t paint things intended for outside use, because of cold weather and rain) I am really happy with the way these projects have been turning out. I hope everyone else enjoys them too.

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My apple tree is still budding, despite the almost overwintering it's been having to do during these ridiculously cold nights! It's April!

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I did want to make a shout out to the places I buy my seeds. One of my favorites is territorial seed! They have really cool container varieties of vegetables. I get a lot of my vegetables and my fruits from this site. A ton of cool gardening stuff.

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Seeds so far

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Some words on Indoor Seed Starting

While I feel that indoor seed starting is somewhat of a must for certain things. It probably just comes down to preference. This is my second year of starting some of my plants (mostly my vegetables) inside, and let me just say, it's annoying. Last year I tried larger fiber pots, which require you to fill the pots with dirt. I enjoyed this, but they were bigger and I am working with one window with good sun. It limited how many seeds I could do inside. This year, to remedy the "too big" problem I went with a smaller seed starting kit. The containers were smaller, some of them were attached, and they came with a fun tray. For me, again working with one window, the tray was not going to work. So I took them out. Now here comes the hard part! Peat moss pellets. I absolutely hate these. I feel like that makes other gardeners cringe with disgust, but just give me some kind of mossy seed starting mix and I'm good. Another hard part is the watering. So far though, I have been able to sprout some awesome seedlings. The random cold Baltimore weather may have stopped or slowed the process later, but more on that subject later.

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I always like to start stuff like this out with pictures of the last year's garden. I have been gardening for 3 years now and this summer will be my fourth garden. I usually like to start fresh every Summer, but I do have plants that always seem to come back. This blog is dedicated to the urban garden. EVERYTHING I plant is in a container. So far it has worked out beautifully.