We are always talking about growing our own food and gardening with the environment in mind but that doesn’t mean you can’t add some great items to your yard and gardens to make it inviting and beautiful. One of my favorite things to add is trellises. These can be a great addition to flower beds, raised vegetable beds and gardens. They also make smaller trellises that are great with cucumbers and squash and a number of other low growing vegetables.

Another wonderful addition to any garden is the garden arbors. Many have trellis sides so you can grow many of your favorite flowers or vegetables right up the sides of the arbor. Arbors can be show pieces in the garden and add to the flow and look. You can place a chair under the arbor or just keep it open. In some cases, it’s wonderful to allow the arbor to fill in the sides and the top creating a beautiful canopy of blooms. Just writing about it makes me want to go out into the garden right now and just take it all in!

For my ¼ acre lot, I have a pretty elaborate garden. I do not mean lots of vegetables rowed out and annuals for cutting. I have an ornamental garden. Boxwood hedges, as well as azaleas, cherries, dogwoods that bloom all spring. Summer color is taken care of by crape myrtles, hydrangeas, and abelias. Fall color is grand with maples and gingkos. I am completely covered with a lovely evergreen shield of hemlocks, hollies, and junipers all winter long. I really like plants and all their diversity.

I do; however, have to share my garden with three children. I work around the basketball goal, the fort, and the swing set. One of the hardest lessons to teach my children is to leave the trees alone. The soft new growth makes excellent swords, wreaths, batons, just about anything a kid can imagine. I try to tell them the soft new stems won’t grow back. They just answer me that the trees have lots of stems. They will be fine. Well, they are not like hair. They do not grow back. The tree might grow more, but once that branch is severed it is lost to the tree forever.

These are the areas of life where the gardener and the mother must compromise. My children will grow up and move on. Someday I hope they will struggle with teaching their own children the same lesson. By then, I’ll have a quiet garden all to myself.

How many children can say they are passionate about vegetables? I would assume about a handful and I was one of those five. Man I must have been an odd kid eating my fruits and veggies rather than the usual junk food. Maybe the love of vegetables can be traced back to the influence of my grandfather. My earliest memories were of him driving his old white Ford pick-up with his harvest crops in the back. He grew the most amazing raspberries and lima beans. His lima beans were the size of quarters and so beautiful; purple with green splattered spots. He would harvest so many limas that he would freeze them in his industrial sized freezers with all his extra crops that would last till the next harvest.

He made sure we were never empty handed. There would always been a frozen delivery, either if we were returning home from a visit or we received a package in the mail, and that box always had lima beans. I would ration each bean to each member of the family making sure of even distribution – that’s how good those lima beans were. Paw-paws lima beans are one of many things I miss about him.

It’s been about a year ago that we decided to build a patio out back and a pond. By spring, we realized that we were in way over our heads and needed some help with this project. We found a company online that had built some wonderful ponds and contacted them to come out and meet with us. Hiring Teacup Gardener was one of the best decisions we have ever made!

We found out that they are contractors and also build patios and other outside projects. They were able to help us finish out the entire pond project plus our patio in a little over a week’s time. Unfortunately, they had to redo some of the things we had done wrong in order for everything to work in concert. The knowledge they brought to the project far exceeded our expectations. Now as we sit out on our patio and listen and watch the birds and other wildlife that have come into our yard due to the addition of our water feature, we feel blessed that our vision has come to life despite our mistakes and missteps. It’s good to know that there are professionals who care that are still around!

There is nothing like cooking with fresh vegetables and herbs. You can’t believe the taste and texture differences from our garden and the local supermarket’s vegetables and fruit. I have become a believer in the local food market because of the taste these foods bring to the dinner table. You see, I am a foodie. That’s right, I love food and everything there is about making the best meals ever.

If you think I am a little over the top, you might be surprised how many of us exist these days. I know lawyers who have free range chickens in their backyard, an electrical engineer who works on a farm part time in order to get grain fed beef at a reduced price for his family and several families that have gone in together to create a garden that they can all eat out of for the season.  If you have time to do a little investigating in regard to our food sources and what is being done to grow chickens and cows faster as well as the sugar highs induced in the brain by manufactured and packaged foods, you would also start investigating what you could do to grow your own great foods. In the mean time, find a local farm and buy your food local; you will be glad you did!

I learned a long time ago that trellises can be a wonderful item for your vegetable garden.  They allow your veggies to grow up instead of out and that means you can grow more in less overall space.  When using a trellis in your garden you will need to make sure you are using a very sturdy trellis.  I prefer a wrought iron or metal trellis for their sturdiness and weight as opposed to a vinyl trellis for this particular application.  These hold up very well under the weight of squash, cucumbers, beans and other vining plants that will grow up the trellis.

You can also use a trellis for tomatoes and these can be lovely used in flowerbeds along with your flowers.  Many people forget that they can utilize their front flowerbeds throughout the spring and summer to grow vegetables.  Having a variety of lettuces makes a wonderful bed of green along with planting a assortment of herbs can be a lot of fun and a great way to use extra flowerbed space.  You will want to contain some of your herbs as there are some that will take over you beds if you’re not careful.  Experiment and have fun!

Much is in the news every day about global greenhouse gases and the warming effect they produce on our global climate. But today I thought I’d look at another type of “Greenhouse Effect”, one that has tremendous positives on our vitality and quality of life.

Owning a greenhouse has been a real pleasure in my life. It has provided me many years of pleasure and rewarded me and my family with countless days’ worth of delicious food and sustenance. As far as hobbies go, I have never had buyer’s remorse or wished I had never gotten into greenhouse gardening (whereas friends with boats and other hobbies all talk about what a mixed bag it is). The “effect” of greenhouse gardening has been nothing but positive in my life, with reduced stress levels, the comfort of watching things grow, and the satisfaction of knowing that I am contributing to a sustainable way of life for my family.

This is the time of year when I can’t sit still. I catch a glorious hint of warmth on a passing breeze, and I get all a-flutter with anticipation of the coming season, when all becomes alive and green again. Seed catalogs have started to come with regularity (one of the few guilty pleasures I still allow myself in my attempts to consume less paper-printed materials) and I know that in a matter of weeks – days, really – I’ll be basking in a stray ray of sunshine, and up to my elbows in rich, life-supporting dirt!

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I hate February or anything, but sometimes, like today, for instance, it just feels like February exists only to slow me down from getting on in to March and April. I am glad there are only 28 days in this month. If it was longer it really would be insufferable. Just had to say it. I know you were thinking it, too.

I was recently asked if gardening is really worth the effort and the expense so I did a little research about just that.  However, before I get into the facts, let me say a couple of things.  First of all, no matter how much gardening and growing your own food could save you at the grocery store, if you don’t like being outside or getting dirt under your fingernails (I hear this a lot from women though there is something called gloves that help you avoid this) then it just may not be for you.  Secondly, gardening is a process, so for all those people looking for instant results gardening will not give it to you.

Now for some facts; approximately sixteen dollars in seeds will give a family seven hundred and fifty dollars in yield.  That’s a 458.75% return on your investment of seeds!  However, we have some additional costs to analyze.  I took the cost from my garden last year that included several tool purchases, potting soil & supplies for seedlings, water cost (and we were in drought conditions) and an average of 2 hours per week at $10 per hr from May through September (21 weeks).  The total cost was $448.00.  Now the overall rate of return is 40.27%!  That’s after my cost and my labor.  This is on an established garden so if you have to prepare the garden your return will be less the first year and your return may not match mine as it will depend on your garden skills, which should improve over time.

The first time I heard this term I was thinking in terms of some kind of new fangled bed that was in the floor that could be automatically raised up at night so you could go to sleep.  Consider my disappointment and then excitement when I realized they were talking about a raised garden bed!  Yes, I was surprised to find out that there was raised bed kits that came with everything you need to create a wonderful flower or vegetable garden right in your backyard..

Some of the kits are small enough to use on patios, decks or landings in places that don’t have much of a yard.  There are some weight restrictions that you do have to adhere to and use light soil mix but it can be done.  For a avid gardener stuck in a place with no land space to garden, that’s a God send! Raised bed kits are one of the most versatile of garden structures because they can be placed just about anywhere in your yard. You can put them around trees, in the front or back yards and use two or more to expand your garden to the size you desire.  They’re a great green idea!