The Beginning

I started thinking about gardening two summers ago. I think it was in June of 2011 that I had officially decided to really get into gardening. I do remember distinctly, "googling" all different types of vegetable, fruits, and flowers. I became obsessed with this past time and found myself doing it daily. I thought about growing things I normally buy from the store. Things that can become rather expensive, especially if they go to waste.

You see, I am known for being a lazy veggie eater. The kind of person that eats salad at dinner, for a week and then gets tired of it. So those three remaining romaine lettuce hearts, in that huge bag bought from a Costco, are left to wilt and die in the fridge.

My first ever personal gardening experience started back in 2010 with a long planter box, gardening soil, and some parsley & cilantro seeds. I'd purchased all of these from Lowes for under twenty bucks. What was the outcome?

 

Parsley survived, Cilantro died.

My Cilantro died. It discouraged me from starting a real garden that grew from the ground. I was obviously very sad and decided to do more research on growing different things. I put off my gardening dream for another year. I literally dragged that heavy @$# planter from the front yard, to the backyard; ashamed of my lack of a green thumb. I left my planter and turned and walked away. Forgetting all about it. If only I had known then that cilantro isn't a very easy herb to grow, nor does it live for very long.

~ Summer of 2011 ~

Whenever I took my dog, Bobo outside to relieve himself, I would stand in my weed stricken yard and daydream of having a beautiful vegetable garden, with flowers bordering it. I would imagine it full of life, and birds and bees would love it too! But then I remembered that I had tried to grow those herbs, and the sadness I felt when my cilantro keeled over. I walked over to that planter and pulled it out from under my dad's avocado tree. The parsley leaves were very yellow and wilted due to the lack of sunlight and from not being watered regularly for over a year. I looked at the sad plant and sighed in defeat.

I don't know what sparked the urge to clip all of the dying leaves, instead of just uprooting it all and tossing it in the garbage bin. Maybe it was my conscience's way of telling me, "Hey, give your thumb a second chance. It might not be as black as you think." 

I grabbed a pair of scissors (because I had no gardening clippers) and started chopping off handfuls of dead and dry parsley leaves. All that was left were stalks. Literally, three thick parsley "branches" were left in my planter. I call them branches because that's what they look like. I grabbed a bag of fertilizer and sprinkled some around it, watered it good until the soil was nice and wet. Then I left it in the sun, day in and day out. I watered it once everyday, and made sure to give it the usual 10-10-10 fertilizer every now and then (every 3 weeks). After awhile, new parsley stems shot out from the thick stalks, and leaves grew from the stems. When some days seemed hotter than others, I made sure to give it a bit more extra water, flooding the planter and letting the excess water drain from the holes in the bottom.

My parsley plants are now 3 years old, and they are doing wonderful! If some leaves turned yellow, I just made sure to cut them off. To encourage new leaves and more growth, I cut handfuls of stems every month or so, even if I wasn't going to use any. For awhile I just cut stems off and threw them into the planter to act as mulch for the parsley stalks. Whenever my parsley becomes over grown, I do this still today.

HUGE and bolting like CRAZY!