How Does Your Garden Grow Blog

I started seeing butterflies hanging out in my grass this week, in the lawn, not on all of the lovely flowers I try to provide for them. I became very curious as to what could possibly be more appealing in my unmowed grass than the buffet of flower options I intentionally planted?! I should start by explaining, we don't treat our lawn with anything. No weed & feed, no fertilizers, no chemicals whatsoever. As far as I'm concerned it all looks the same once it's mowed down anyway. In our 8b, south east Georgia growing zone it gets cold enough to give us a winter break from tending to the lawn and we're left with a mostly brown landscape. With spring here and me putting off calling the landscaper to mow (because who wouldn't want to save some money?) we were suddenly presented with patches of tiny yellow and purple flowers that the butterflies seem enchanted by. Try as I might, I wasn't able to capture an image of the butterflies dancing on the

Simple, durable, and tall enough to walk through comfortably. My Husband built this trellis for my birthday this year! I promise you, the hardest part of this arched trellis was getting the materials loaded on the trailer and bringing them home. There are multiple ways you could do this but I focused on trying to keep it a simple afternoon task and we can move it if necessary at the minimal cost of buying more heavy duty zip ties. Supplies you will need: - Cattle Panels 16' x 50" (you will need 2 panels to make one 8' wide trellis but you can easily do this with 1 panel as well. I used 4 panels total to make the 2 archways you see in the image.) - T-Posts (We used 6 of the 7' posts for a little extra stability because I plan to grow heavy plants like gourds and squash over it but you could get away with using 5') - Heavy Duty Zip Ties (The length isn't a big deal, most zip ties will be long enough but they MUST be Heavy Duty! - OPTIONAL -

Autumn Olive (Elaeagnus umbellata) I love these tiny, sweet smelling clusters of flowers that cover almost the entire plant! These little flowers don't actually turn into olives at all, but a tiny red or sometimes a golden berry. They are edible and are said to have many health benefits if you can get them before the birds do! Health Benefits If you're interested in some of the reported health benefits of this wonder berry, keep reading. It takes very little research to find the following information to get your mouths watering!  The flowers are astringent, cardiac and stimulant. The seeds are used as a stimulant in the treatment of coughs. The expressed oil from the seeds is used in the treatment of pulmonary affections. The fruit of many members of this genus is a very rich source of vitamins and minerals, especially in vitamins A, C and E, flavanoids and other bio-active compounds. It is also a fairly good source of essential fatty acids, which is fair

A very common question I get asked is how much did it cost to fill such tall raised beds with soil?  Well, almost nothing and I'm going to tell you how we did it! I waited years for my Husband to build this beauty for me. He's a perfectionist so there was a lot of collaboration between us. His primary concern was that it would be aesthetically pleasing, my primary concern was functionality and in my case, that meant it needed to be tall enough that I could still use it with my medical issues, and that left us with a huge decision to make...How do you fill tall raised beds without breaking the bank?! There are actually many answers to that question and the honest answer is, you can fill the bottom with almost anything. Leaves, grass, sticks, rocks, rubble, even old cotton clothes, and some furniture! There are pros and cons to everything but I'm going to focus on the method we used because that's what I have experience with. So if you've been into gar

Thank you for joining me here at our first, very own How Does Your Garden Grow Blog! When the other Admins presented the idea to start a blog, it felt daunting to me...for all of 30 seconds...then I immediately went to work finding a good platform for sharing! I could really get lost for hours playing with the design but I stopped and I'm focusing on why we wanted to bring this resource to YOU, our friends in the How Does Your Garden Grow Facebook Group!  ❤︎ In the months to come, I hope to share with you all the fun things going on in my humble backyard garden and baby orchard, my successes, and failures. Whether the blog will be weekly, bi-weekly or whenever the mood strikes me is yet to be seen but most importantly, I hope you enjoy! ~ Andrea B.