My Gardening Journey

7 hours ago
3 min read

Third time's the charm, right!? Right?

A while back I wanted to start my own little garden. I wanted to start with herbs, and I’ll be honest, I went into it with no knowledge whatsoever. I just followed the instructions on the seed packets and knew I had to water them every now and then. I know, I was in over my head.

Anybody familiar with the efforts of gardening, let alone starting one, probably read that first paragraph and probably thought, “oh, this poor girl,” and you would be right because the information I have now exceeds every thought I had back then.

But before we get into the nitty-gritty of this journey, I think we should start with why. Why did I want to start gardening?

Well, for starters, this was around the beginning of the whole egg prices being high fiasco. Money was getting tight, and now social media was riddled with how vegetables had parasites and pesticides affecting the produce and all that jazz. So my mom and I thought it would be cool if we could grow our own vegetables. We could save some money and things would be freshly grown.

I also pulled inspiration from social media, of course. There is this one creator I follow on TikTok, redleafranch. His garden is amazing! Obviously something he has been working on for a long time, but seeing his garden and all the fresh produce he grew heavily inspired me to give it a try.

So fast forward to now, days of research and gathering advice from other gardeners on social media later, and I am giving this another try.

(Note: the first two times did not go well. I neglected the plants the first time and went on a trip the second time.)

I’ve made so many notes for different types of water I can make to help the plants grow or keep the leaves vibrant. I’ve started a compost, and created a grow bed from an unused container. Gathering sticks, leaves, and keeping cardboard for the grow bed; I’m really trying here!

What started at first as a quick little experiment to save money is slowly turning into a passion and maybe a hobby. I have a lot of hope for this to start properly and show results, and so far, in my third try, there are results.

I have started planning tomato, cilantro, pepper, and carrot seeds. We are about a week in, and I have six seedlings that have sprouted and are showing leaves already! I’m so happy and excited to see them continue to grow, but I’m also anxious because I want this to work out so badly!

How cool would it be to have my own garden? To be able to grow my own fruit and vegetables? To not rely on supermarkets or be concerned about pesticides that are used on our produce, to know that everything used in the house (produce-wise) is 100% organic?

These are the things I have been thinking about in terms of starting this garden and have

been my own self-encouragement to continue this journey!

But that's just me! Thanks for reading,

MD :)

(P.S. Check out my Etsy shop for cute little crochet things and Instagram for my photography!)