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Outside the grocery store this weekend, a man was selling pints of blueberries, picked fresh on his farm that very morning. He had a couple of blueberry bushes for sale as well for $24.95 each. Always looking to be more self-sufficient, I couldn’t resist taking my own blueberry bush home with me.

The farmer was happy to give me some advice about how best to plant it, and I got some further instruction from the guy at the local garden supply store.

Blueberry bushes can tolerate some shade, but the more sun they get the better they grow. Also, because my yard has a lot of clay, I need to take extra care to add some things to the soil so that the roots don’t get soaked with water.

The farmer suggested that after digging a hole for the bush, that I put some mulch at the bottom to lift the roots up away from the clay. The bush should then sit a few inches higher than the level of the yard around it. That way, if it rains, the water will have somewhere to go, away from the roots, until it is able to absorb fully into the ground.

The man at the garden supply store recommended adding something called “Nature’s Helper” which is a soil conditioner. It costs less than $3 for a 20 pound bag. He suggested that I mix in some of the yard dirt in with the Nature’s Helper to “get the plant used to the yard.”

They are the experts so I followed these instructions as best I could.

When I decided to start gardening (see earlier posts in this category) I really thought that by now I would have a lovely backyard garden, springing forth a bounty of fruits and vegetables. It’s taking a long time to get that going. I need to bring in some decent dirt and finish loosening up what’s there with a pickax. I’ve been dragging my feet on it quite a bit due to the expense and the effort involved.

But that’s no reason not to get some other gardening projects done. I always thought that planting herbs around my front yard would be a practical and beautiful addition to the decorative plants that are already there. There is probably a “right” way to do that. Waiting until I found the motivation to look into all of that was just holding me back from actually doing it.

I’ve had a potted mint plant in my kitchen for months, doing quite well. I recently saw a cilantro plant for sale at the grocery store and just had to bring it home. My kitchen counter was getting too crowded so I figured it was time to plant the herbs.

So, what was the complex process for starting my “herb garden”? I dug a hole, planted the herbs, and gave them a little water. After 2 days, they look quite well. I’ll post another picture after they’ve either flourished or died.

It’s been almost 3 months since I covered up my new garden area with black plastic in order to kill the weeds and lawn underneath. Amazingly, some of the plants are still alive under there, so I’ve decided to move the process along by breaking up the dirt with a pickax and pulling out the weeds. In retrospect, maybe I should have hacked up the yard first to cut the plants from their roots.

Pickaxing the ground is a lot of hard work, so I will be doing a small area at a time over the next couple of weeks. Once an area of dirt is broken up, it’s very easy to pull the weeds out from the roots. You can also run your hands or a rake through the dirt and find a lot of stray roots that way. When I’m done for the day, I am going to cover the dirt back up to keep killing off any plants that may still have roots down there.

I want to reiterate that I am not an experienced gardener. I am figuring things out as I go based on what I remember from years ago, what I learn from friends, and what I find on the internet. Any advice is welcomed.

Planting a vegetable garden has been high on my list of things to do since I moved into my new Asheville home this past July. Many convenient excuses have prevented me from getting started on this health-giving, money-saving, highly satisfying project. Today is the day when I put it off no longer.

I spent this weekend reading about gardening, trying to find out the “right” way to go about it. There is a ton of information out there and it can be prohibitively overwhelming. The best advice I found was to just get started. Don’t worry about doing everything perfect on your first garden. If you worry about all the nuances, you’ll never plant anything.

The first step is to pick a good spot. A garden needs to get 6-10 hours of sunlight each day, so avoid areas that are shaded by trees or buildings. A garden should be in a relatively flat area that won’t collect sitting water. Also, avoid areas next to trees that will compete for soil nutrients. My garden location isn’t ideal, but it’s definitely the best area my yard has to offer. I chose a 20’X 15′ area in the middle of the backyard, a little too close to a small tree, but it should get pretty solid sunlight when spring hits.

The second step is to kill the existing grass and weeds. The most common way to do this is to cover the area with opaque plastic for at least a month. The weeds may appear to be dead after a short time, but it is important to keep the area covered in order to kill the roots. The longer the plastic is left on, the fewer weeds that will survive. I do plan to replace the hodge-podge of junk with some 2X4s or bricks to hold down the plastic, but I don’t have any on hand and I didn’t want to use that as another excuse to procrastinate.

Now that I have the garden started, I can continue reading and learning about the next steps. How do I prepare the soil? When do I plant? Which vegetables should be planted when? Any advice for this novice gardener is very much appreciated.