My mom and grandma were/are avid gardeners and I grew up surrounded by flowers. After years of living in apartments, I was delighted to finally move into my own home and start up a garden of my own.
2010: My first attempt... well, it was an unmitigated disaster. Not a good idea to try starting seeds in a house BEFORE you move in, especially when that happens in Texas in June. I so desperately wanted to have a garden that I ignored common sense and tried growing seeds when it was far past the time to do so. I got one of those Burpee seed starting kits with the 72 slots and tried a whole mess of plants. The roots became hopelessly entangled before I was able to start getting them in the ground, and nothing survived.
The 'landscaping' that the previous owners had put in died almost immediately when they apparently temporary sprinklers they were using were removed when we bought the house. In the front of the house, we had two remaining shrubs left, and in the back was a beastly knockout rose bush that got bigger the more you cut it back. Well, I had a blank canvas to start with...
2011: I was going to grow veggies! I went to Home Depot and got a veggie garden box, some small veggie plants (a few tomatoes, a few squash, a strawberry, etc). I had no idea what I was doing - I didn't even have tomato cages for the tomatoes! Squash vine borers killed my zucchini plants. The strawberry shriveled away under the Texas sun. The marigolds I bought to keep the tomatoes happy were covered over by the floppy tomatoes and they all died. The tomatoes didn't do well at all.
What did go right in 2011 was that we bought and planted three knockout rose bushes in front of the house: a double red, a double pink, and a yellow. We also got some sprinklers that connected to garden hoses, so we were able to keep the rose bushes and some of the lawn alive. :)
Also, I made a better attempt with seeds. I bought a packet of crimson rambler morning glory seeds, soaked them in water, and was going to plant them outside in the back corner of our yard by the fence (the spot that I had cleared last year for the seeds I tried to grow). As it turned out, right when I was going to plant them outside, it started to rain... and then it started to REALLY rain. Out in the pouring rain and blowing winds, I mostly just tossed/dropped my dish of wet seeds in the area where I wanted the flowers, and ran back inside. Much to my surprise, they did sprout! I hadn't planned ahead for morning glories (I just thought they were pretty and I thought the neighbor's fence was ugly) so I didn't have a trellis or support for the plants at all. But they grew anyway, and the vines self-supported enough to survive and even produce some pretty little reddish flowers! That winter, after the vines were long dead, I was able to collect some seeds.
I tried some balsaminas, and they did okay until it got too hot (and then the poor things started to wilt in in the sun). I potted up a few and brought them indoors, and they didn't do too badly as houseplants.
I also attempted some sunflowers from seed. Little did I realize that sunflowers only thrive if planted directly in the ground (as they need a long taproot). I started some indoors and replanted them outside our kitchen window. They were stunted little things, only about a foot or so tall, but they did grow and produce flowers... that a cheeky little bastard of a squirrel ate right in front of us. We were eating dinner when this squirrel plops his butt right on our windowsill, bites the flower stem, and takes off with his prize, the flower head. Needless to say, I didn't save any seeds from those sunflowers!
To be continued!
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