Thoughts on Gardening

Growing up I lived in a nice house on 1 acre of land.  Along all of the edges of the rectangular lawn I loved were curved garden plots filled with flowers, trees, and other beautiful plants.  Unfortunately, in order to have such beautiful gardens we needed to maintain them; and we I mean me.  Every summer Saturday I, alongside my mother, was delegated the job to weed, plant, and mulch for hours until I could go swim at the beach or hang out with my friends.  It became a dreaded task that I looked for every opportunity to avoid.

A beautiful as impatiens are they were my worst
enemy growing up in the summer.
Source: http://puckettsnursery.com/images/impatiens.jpg

Fast forward to my junior year of college, through one of my student groups I heard of the club Campus Grow.  This group maintained a community garden on CMU's campus where students could rent a plot of land and garden that 10x10ft square.  My boyfriend and I jumped at the chance and decided to start our journey from the beginning, starting our first seeds in mid February.  A week after we transplanted our measly seedlings more then half were dead and the others looked like they were barely hanging on to life.  We plucked the dead ones, replacing them with hearty store bought seedlings, and nurtured the ones that seemed distressed.  As the summer went on I had flashbacks to those Saturdays in the summer, weeding in the hot sun and began making excuses.  Our plot quickly exploded with weeds and it seemed all was lost, on the bright side our plot was the most 'productive' of all the plots in the garden.  We did get a harvest from the plants that managed to survive and not be totally choked out by weeds, however not as large of a harvest as I had been hoping.  After clearing our plot Rob and I decided it would be easier to garden if we didn't have to ride 15min to the garden and opted to not renew our plot for the next summer.

This is pretty much what my flower seedlings look
like, but with more leaves.
Source: http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums
/annuals/msg112301343544.1112561123716.jpg

This year we decided to try something new, potted plants.  Instead of planting a large number of plants in the ground we would do a few of our favorites and grow them in pots in our apartment instead.  We started cherry tomatoes, parsley, spearmint, and flowers; and began a little later then the previous year, in late March.  The tomatoes, spearmint, and parsley we started in egg cartons then transplanted to larger pots, the flowers however we started directly in a decorative pot. 

None of the plants we started are doing very well.  The parsley is spindly, only has on true leaf on each plant, and cannot support itself.  The tomatoes are doing will but are very small compared to how I remember they were this time last year.  I also left them outside for some direct sun only to inadvertently uproot two and damage the others.  I have since replanted them and added significantly more soil for support, however one that got uprooted doesn't look like it is going to make it.   The flowers are also spindly and not supporting themselves, however they are the most promising of all the others.
   
 Even though it seems hopeless as of now we will press on and hopefully are plants will not just improve but Thrive!

Hopefully my bachelors buttions survive and I get some nice blooms like this.

I cannot wait for my tomatoes to grow so I can make this and a bunch of other yummy food!