In my hay days of gardening, I was pretty good.  If I planted a seed it would grow.  In fact I had a hard time making things not grow.  I was pretty proud of myself and posted many pictures of them on Facebook.  Ask anyone, I was pretty obnoxious.

Well, now  I am having my organic gardening pride kicked in.  I had to give up my in ground garden bed when we moved to the new house and I was determined to have a another garden but in containers.  I had plan and a mission and I was going to teach YOU how it was done.

I started with seeds.  I found the ‘how to’ on Pinterest and was slightly successful.

Can you see the Basil growing under the plastic wrap?  I grew those from seeds indoors! I was pretty proud of myself and then I discovered that Basil is one of the easiest things on the planet to grow and then it died from separation anxiety (it could have been lack of sunshine but I am sticking with the anxiety) after we went out of town for a few days. In efforts to cheer myself up I went outside to check the seeds I had planted and nothing.  The soil looked dead.

The gardeners on Pinterest are liars.  Visions of pins with pictures of plants growing out of shoes, buckets, mason jars and anything else that doesn’t move came to mind and I was irritated.  My plants are in pots with proper drainage and they died.  Frauds. Shoes can’t grow plants and neither can that stupid tool box.

I started over. I went to the nursery spent close to 71 dollars in starting plants and came home in rush of determination to began again. This is going to work.

It’s working. Sort-of.  I found what I thought would be the best place for the plants but apparently my plants are the high maintenance kind and only like partial sun. They looked wilted half the day. No amount of sweet talk and awkward umbrella shade would help them perk up.

Here is my solution.

They went from this….

All of my plants squished by the side of the house.

To this…

If those plants were people they would be spoiled.  Regular water cycle and a tray with wheels in case I need to move them out of the harsh afternoon sun.

I am no longer bitter towards the gardeners from Pinterest.  This has been a huge learning lesson for me, all container gardens are not created equal.  If the container garden has a lush green background you can almost be assured that it is not located in the desert.  Desert container gardening is very different than any other place that actually has water.

It’s a challenge.  I am not going to say I will get it right this time but I will be ticked if I don’t get at least one strawberry and one bell pepper.