Sunday, August 29, 2010

Grow Baby Grow

One of the things that I really enjoy about our new home is the garden.  Growing up my mom always had the most lovely, flourishing gardens and she taught me a lot about plants and gardening.  It's kind of fun now because I can call her for advice when one of my plants isn't doing well or for suggestions on what kinds of things will grow best in certain areas of the yard.  Her thumb is so green in fact that she actually still has a plant that someone gave her as a gift when I was born!  

Although my thumb is still a little more on the yellow-green side, I am learning a lot now that I have a yard to work in.  I've recently noticed a lot of adorable succulent gardens in magazines and decided that I would try my hand at making one of my own.  Living in San Diego succulents flourish everywhere you look, so finding free starters wasn’t a problem at all.  I actually had a pretty good variety right in my front yard.

To get started, I simply Googled "how to make a succulent garden" and I found this simple step-by-step guide on ehow.com.

Check it out:
How to Make a Dish Garden From Succulents

The process is actually pretty simple and because succulents hold water within their stems, leaves and roots they are really hardy, making them easy to transplant and pretty hard to kill.  

For my succulent garden, I had a couple of old pots from IKEA in my shed that I pulled out and cleaned up.   Since these pots don’t have holes in the bottom, I used layers of various size stones underneath the soil to help with drainage.  The most important tip to remember with succulents is not to over water them.  They are desert dwellers so if they get too much water it can actually cause them to rot.  Try to water them any time the top two inches of soil feels dry. 

Here is the final result.  I think they turned out pretty cute.  Now hopefully they will grow!

Happy Planting!

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