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My husband and I have been living in our house for just over 365 days. Last year, when we moved in, our 1/2 acre of property was already covered in warm-hued leaves; the trees were bare. Because we didn’t have a rake — or very much time — we hired a lawn care company to do a Fall clean-up. They mowed and raked and tidied up our property in just a couple of hours.

This year, I watched in dread as the leaves began falling off the trees. J and I decided that we would play the roles of responsible homeowners and not spend the extra money for somebody else to do our dirty work. When there was an adequate amount of leaves blanketing the lawn, we woke up early on a Sunday and began tackling the front yard. We got a quarter of the way through before we had to abandon our project for other plans. A couple of days later we did another quarter of the front yard. It took a little over an hour, but when we were finished, half of our front lawn was clean.

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Forty-eight hours later, you couldn’t even tell where we had raked. More leaves had abandoned their branches.

Like most couples, I imagine, my husband and I really only spend quality time together in the evenings and on the weekends. Occasionally I have to work on Sundays, so we don’t always have full weekends together. If we were to rake and clean our entire property, it would take one whole exhausting day, maybe two. In the words of Carrie Bradshaw, I can’t help but wonder: Is it worth it to spend the rare time we have together sweating it out in the yard? Or would our time be better spent if we shelled out the cash for somebody else to rake?

We aren’t rich by any stretch of the imagination. We try to live comfortably within our means. It is extravagant to hire a lawn care service to tend to our yard? Or is it a good use of our time and money? What do you think?

As you may or may not know, my husband and I are currently living in a tiny 2-bedroom apartment (shared with our two cats, Mike and Butters).  We have no outdoor space, save for our tiny patio and lil’ windowboxes, which don’t provide us with much gardening opportunity.

As someone who grew up in a home with lots of garden space and a little “plot” of my own, it’s heartbreaking for me to not have a bit of dirt.  Thus, it’s become our goal in the next year to have a truly viable spot of land on which we can grow things.  Along these lines, I was reading the WSJ yesterday (no, this is not a habit of mine, though it probably should be) and stumbled upon an article on composting.

{Photo via greenbudget}

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My neighbor Leigh built this amazing potted herb garden in her backyard and I asked her to share! She found a similar project at Ikea, but decided to DIY her own version. She’s pretty handy around the house, and if I ever needed a repair done she’s the first person I would call for help.

Materials:
2 landscaping timbers, cut to 6 feet each
1 6×2×12 board, cut into two  6 foot pieces
8 3 inch wood screws
10-20 screws (depending on type of pot rings)
10 7″ pots
10 6″ pot rings

Instructions:
Lay timbers on flat surface approximately 6 feet apart.
Lay 2×6 boards perpendicular over timbers approximately 3 feet apart.
Use screws to affix boards to timbers, 2 per board.
Prime and paint with preferred color (optional).
Once dry, layout and affix pot rings 5 per board, approximately 10″ apart.
Select garden location.
Dig two one foot post holes 5 1/2 feet apart.
Place structure into holes and use level to make sure structure is straight.
Pack dirt around post to secure (for more stability, you can use concrete).
Select herbs or flowers, plant in pots, place in rings and enjoy!

Originally posted on Honeysuckle Life

This post goes out to those of you who have always wanted to grow your own food, but haven’t gotten around to it or don’t know how.  I’m here to tell you that if I can do it, you can too (I’m the klutziest, and some might say laziest, girl around).  It’s healthy, gratifying, and fun, with a high return on your investment. That’s my kind of hobby.

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Shopping list:

• Pots (optional, see below)
• Potting soil
• Seedlings
• Fertilizer and/or compost
• Stakes or cages (optional)
• Gloves (optional)
• Trowel or small shovel

DISCLAIMER:  This method may not be the textbook way… but that wouldn’t be any fun, would it?

There’s no magic formula, but here’s the recipe that’s helped me find success. Most importantly, you need a sunny spot (at least 6-8 hours of sunshine per day in the summer).  Use your gut about whether the ground looks like a hospitable environment for baby veggie plants.  If not, you have 2 options: either buy some nice big pots and a few bags of potting soil, or just buy the soil and dump it on the ground on top of the inhospitable soil. It’s cheating, but I’ve seen it work.

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This is the second year that my husband and I have had a little vegetable garden in the back yard, and tomatoes are one of our favorite things to grow.  One problem is that the plants get very large and need to be staked or put in the support cages to keep them upright, so every time we saw the “Topsy Turvy” commercial on TV we thought it sounded like a great idea!

This year, we decided to give growing tomatoes upside down a try.  But instead of ordering a plastic green bag to plant our tomato plant in, we decided to build our own.

(You’ll notice the more traditional tomato cage around another tomato plant in the background… we were hedging our bets in case the upside down tomato growing didn’t work.)

What makes a “topsy turvy” is a planter with a hole in the bottom, large enough for the plant to fit through, and a hole or opening on top for water.  You then hang it up either with a hook onto a patio or a shepherd’s hook in the garden (as you see above).  Tomatoes are very resiliant and hardy plants, and will start to grow back upwards towards the sun which doesn’t affect them at all.  All you need to do is make sure they have enough water!

We took a wire hanging planter with coco mat lining and cut a hole in the bottom of the coco matting.

We gently fed the green part of the plant through the hole from the inside of the planter, leaving the roots inside, and filled with potting soil.  We then covered it with a little mulch to help retain moisture, and, voila!  Our own topsy turvy planter!  And I might add, I think it looks nicer than the original.

Ours:

Theirs:

So far, so good with our little experiment!  In fact, my husband swears that this tomato plant is doing better than the others - it even has its first blooms!

The cost of this will depend on where you buy your supplies.  We bought our planter and shephard’s hook at Big Lots, and probably spent about $10 to $15 for both, which is not a huge savings over the original Topsy Turvy, but we both think it looks nicer in our garden, and if we don’t re-use the planter for tomatoes next year, we can use it like a regular hanging planter again.

Last summer, I discovered a love for growing herbs and flowers. Despite having limited space, we had a porch container garden.  I’m not Martha Stewart, but I found it was a lot easier than I originally thought. As newbies to gardening, we went to our local Garden Center for guidance. This was the best course of action for us. I highly recommend this because your local Garden Center/Greenhouse has a wealth of knowledge about plants that grow best in your area. At our local Garden Center, they asked a few questions about the types of plants we wanted, how much maintenance we were willing to do, and the amount of sun that our porch got.  Ultimately, we grew basil, mint, thyme, sage, and rosemary for cooking. In addition, we had several varieties of dahlias.

Rob prepping pots for planting {photo from Author’s Personal Collection}

Dahlias {photo from Author’s Personal Collection}

Dahlias and Cooking Herbs {photo from Author’s Personal Collection}

Unfortunately, at the end of the fall, most of our plants died. Now that it’s spring time, we’re trying to plan this year’s summer garden. I’ve been looking around the web for inspiration. I wanted to share some of the beautiful and simple container gardens I’ve found.

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Be still my heart, Target has gone green.  And it looks goooooood!  More info here.