Brand New to Gardening Outside

Thanks for the info on Earthboxes, Sher! It's good to hear that they're so durable. After investing in my Aerogardens, though, I don't have that much to put into new outdoor gardening equipment beyond what I already have (plus a few small things, like a rain gauge). The Earthboxes will sadly have to wait for another time. 

And hi Shawn! I will definitely do a search and check for more on the eggplant. I'm also growing peppers in another Bounty, and waiting on my Harvest to arrive so I can start some lettuce. As you can see, I'm all in in growing things. It's giving me projects to do and things to look forward to right now, which is what I need. 

I did spend about 2-3 hours in the garden today! Mostly getting rid of dead things. My garden was so insane that you'd believe it if someone told you it was where they filmed the original "Grey Gardens."

I forgot to take a "before" picture, but just imagine the "after" picture...except that there are about 8 elm tree saplings, lots of very spikey brambles, and dead weeds 5 feet high. So it's still not much, but it's a big improvement! (Just don't look at neighbor's neat little plot behind the fence).

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You can see my rhubarb over on the left, behind the bowling balls (which my spouse insisted on having as "décor"). The rhubarb has grown every summer ever since we got the house, but I've never harvested any because I dislike rhubarb so much. A friend is coming to dig it out on Tuesday (a safe distance from me, of course, who will watch encouragingly from the porch). 

Later this week I plan to rip everything else out - except the flowers growing in the back - and hopefully plant my new veggies! I'm hoping to get some seedlings from the local gardening supply place. 

I'm feeling...cautiously optimistic?

Thanks, Sher! What a heartwarming thing to read. I am quite pleased with it as well. Of course there's still a lot of work to be done, but you could actually imagine it becoming  a real garden, so that's something!


Yes, it's a small area to start; about 10 x 10. There's another area the same size on the other side of the path, but I'm not tackling that this year. I certainly have no ambitions for a garden like your father's, though it does sound amazing!

Thanks Shawn! And you clearly don't have a black thumb: look at how well you tend to your Aerogardens!

I'm lucky that there's no online school today (I'm an elementary school teacher), so I've spent some time researching different kinds of gardens. I've decided to go with the Three Sisters method. This is a traditional Native practice for growing corn, beans, and squash in Minnesota, so I figure it'll be well-suited to the soil I have. You can read more about it and watch a video on The Old Farmer's Almanac.

Today/tomorrow/Wednesday I'm planning to create my mounds. So I'll have to rip out everything, turn over the soil, and mound it. I'll post a picture when I'm done!

Updated pictures! Today I spent a good 2 hours after work out there mucking around. I'm not really sure what I'm doing, but I figure clearing out the weeds and turning over the earth can't hurt. I thought I'd be able to get everything done today....ha! But I feel like I made some good progress. Or maybe I didn't! I have no context for any of this, haha. 


Take a look at my old post for some context...and then here it is after a few hours of work today!

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Sher, how does it look to your more expert eyes? I'm hoping to clear the rest out tomorrow. I'll leave the flowers growing in the back; they become pretty little tulips every year. But hopefully I'm doing the right thing?

Shawn hope you're doing well, too!

Thanks Sher! I'm so happy you think I'm doing well. It's nice to talk to someone about this project, especially since no one I know in real life knows much about gardening. Thanks for the tips about what to do next! I'll have to see about getting some fertilizer from the local store. 

I was actually surprised how much fun it was to attack things with my shovel. And I felt very pleased when I finally vanquished The Giant Elm Tree Root. Took me forever. You can see it sticking up by the bowling balls in my first picture. And now...I have finally vanquished it! It's sitting on a pile of other roots, twigs, and dead plant matter I pulled out.

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I can only hope the weather holds up the rest of the week! It's summer everywhere else, but with Minnesota you never know!

Hopefully I'll have another update soon.

Thank you, @cornne! I ordered some on your recommendation. Thanks for the tip! If you have any more, I'm all ears. 

On to today's garden update! Another 2-3ish hours well spent. I dug up the rest of the garden and decided to expand it a bit, too. And thanks to Shawn, I now know how to embed photos so show you all the journey thus far. (Hopefully I'm doing it right!)

As a reminder, here's what it looked like after I pulled out the 5 foot weeds (really wish I'd taken a picture of that).



And here it is today!



I even decided to expand it past the bench you can see on the right. So here is a view of the entire garden! (Complete with a very exciting view of my garage).



I can thank Sher for tomorrow's project: check over everything to make sure I didn't miss any plants, tear those out, and rake, rake, rake. After that I'll see about getting some compost and fertilizer like you suggested, Sher. I have no idea what I'm doing there, either. Any tips?

Also today: I bought seeds! I've been doing a lot of research on native Minnesota plants. I found this amazing place: Prairie Moon Nursery. They sell Minnesotan prairie plants that you can't find anywhere else, and that also help protect our local prairie environment. I'm very excited. After some research, I ordered:

- Prairie turnips (also known as timpsula)
- Nodding Onion

- Showy Wild Garlic

- Wild Strawberry

- Rose Mallow


I also bought some summer squash and amaranth from a different vendor. To round things out, I'm hoping to get a blackberry bush and some prairie onion from my local garden supply store. It's a slight departure from my three sisters idea, but I realized that the corn would give me very low yield for the amount of space it'd take up. So I opted for tall amaranth instead. I plan to plant the amaranth and squash in the longer, thinner part of the garden, and put the rest of the veggies in the bigger plot.

How will it go? No one knows! I've got to read up on seed sowing and spacing. My showy wild garlic is coming as a "bare root plant," so I've got to figure out what to do with that. Gah! So much to do. But it's so nice to have a project. After a long day of teaching school online, I couldn't wait to get outside into the garden this afternoon. And now I feel quite happy and content. 

Thanks for reading, everyone! I'd be so grateful for any feedback, tips, or even just to chat. 

You have done a wonderful job clearing and expanding.  Looking forward to seeing a very full happy garden.