2015 Flower Garden

2015 Flower Garden

The flowers are planted! First, I had to refill the garden with miracle grow dirt.

Then I leveled the dirt off.

Next, my family formed a planting crew

Planting involves cutting the plant out of the plastic holder, dipping the roots into a pale that contains water and miracle grow, planting it in a whole, they pressing the dirt around the roots to make sure air can't get to the roots. Each family member had a different task in that process.

We planted 140 flowers between the front beds and the back yard beds.

The first year, we planted 195 flowers, which were far too many. Last year, we did just 180, again, too many. This time I cut it back to 140 while in search for the right number of flowers. I believe next year I will try 114. Perhaps 14 for the back yard, 50 for the curve, and 50 in front of the porch. 

This year I added 8 cubic feet of additional garden soil. I didn't think that would be enough, but, it worked out well.

I have been doing flowers for ten years - far too long for me to remember all the past crops. But I do remember some of them. In 2013, the flowers were hand watered daily and they overfilled the gardens. In 2014, we used sprinkler and soaker hoses. The summer was unusually hot too.  The plant's stems were thin and viney, and the flower bed did not do as well as most years. This year, we are using sprinklers and soaker hostes again, so, it will be interesting to see the results again.