Where do I start?!

Wait a minute... Write a blog? about gardening? I have never done EITHER of these things.. CRAP! (ok deep breaths... Let me grab a cold beer...) All right, now that I'm past that, I guess there is only 1 place to start.

The Prologue

Since I scored this SWEEEET gig in May of 2010, I have tried to gather and retain as much information as i can about these two topics. The plant names I can understand; botanical names are fun! But this blog isn't about botanical names, nor is that relevant to anything right now.

GARDENING and more precisely, plant placement in the landscape, have been quite elusive to me however. There seem to be so many moving parts and variables that its comparable to a math equation... Full Sun, Part shade, Full shade, Lyme, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potash (WTF is potash anyway!?), sharp drainage, moist soil, loose soil, hardiness zones, and all different plants have different requirements! My head spins! (keep in mind I was never  to anything plant related until about a year ago)

Well, what I have learned so far is that if  I look at the back of the seed packet or plant label it will tell me what the plant needs. (I know it sounds obvious, but sometimes a plant can look so pretty that you will overlook the requirements.) An extremely vital part of choosing a plant is to make sure it will work in your Hardiness Zone if it is a perennial (comes back every year), however, most annuals or tender perennials should fair well anywhere over the summer and die off in the fall (unless you live in an extremely cold area...)

Fertilizer is key to not only the success of a plant but will also vastly improve proliferation which will result in a much more attractive end result. Organic fertilizer is definitely the way to go, especially on a small scale. Whichever you choose, fertilizer is made up of mainly 3 components:

• Nitrogen
• Phosphorus
• Potasium

On the packaging there will be 3 numbers separated by a dash, they represent quantities of Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potasium (aka Potash.) A good rule of thumb is a lower amount of phosphorus will make plants more true to form, and higher phosphorus will help with budding and flowering, but will make plants grow tall and stringy (leggy.) I will have more information on fertilizer but this is a good start.

Read tags, find out your hardiness zone, water, and fertilize and you are almost setup for success!

This FINALLY brings me to my point, Cheryl and Pierre Bennerup,  have heard my case and decided to be generous enough to help me out! Pierre Bennerup is CEO of Sunny Border Nurseries and Cheryl is a phenomenal plants-person. A few of my coworkers have also signed on to help me out, Brenton LaTour and Jeremy Webber in particular have been extremely helpful with timing and planning.

Young Eggplant

A couple of weeks ago Cheryl came to me and said "Why don't you start a garden, and write a blog about your experience as a beginner gardener. Pierre and I will help you." "BRILLIANT!" I exclaimed, (well not out loud anyway it was more like, "ok, cool!") but inside I was both overjoyed and overwhelmed. This is going to take some hard work, dedication and planning.

Fortunately, I'm not afraid of any of those components and I have all the space, manure, & sunlight I need


Let's begin! 

(Next post will be chock full of information I PROMISE!!)

(By the way, this is all a learning experience, so if you have any tips, tricks, or want to point out that I am blatantly doing something wrong leave it in the comments!)