Okay... that was cliche, right? But really, I'd like to tell you all how it started with me - my gardening and my love for plants.
I moved out of my parents house aged 29 into a townhouse in Woodridge, Logan City, Brisbane to find a tiny postage-sized backyard filled to the brim with weeds of all kinds. It was overgrown and I couldn't step outside without having something 'bite' me.
I had some serious work ahead of me.
I spent a good 6 months just pulling up what the landlords called 'lawn' and putting down weed killer; causing me to start the whole place to start over completely. Yes, I had a completely blank slate of a back garden... yard... it looked like something from the early 1980's - it had absolutely nothing in it except two Logan City Council drain lids and a sewage filter lid an that - my friends - was it.
We had a care-taker here at the complex who helped me out with top soil and grass seed and watering it all it, fertilising it and making it grow the way it was supposed to - but I kept on getting bindi's and Scotch Thistles. The first was a complete mystery but the second was a matter of just pulling them out at the right time... and eventually, I got rid of all 15 of them (yeah, you read right!).
The damned, Bindis? Well, it wasn't until I looked over the side fence one lovely day that I found out that I was next to what was commonly known as a Queen Patch. This is a huge round patch of the weed which had a flower sprouting out of the middle of it. I had never seen one before and haven't seen one since, but our care taker used full-strength weed killer on it and to dig up half the dirt to pull out all the weeds. It was amazing to watch - but I never got a huge infestation of Bindis again; instead, I only got a few here and there which I pull out as soon as I see them.
Once the lawn was starting to look good, I began to grow vegetables and herbs. It was great! Seeing I was from a family who grew their own veggies all the time, I got a lot of advice from my Dad and other family members on how to grow them. I also started collecting books on how to grow them as well. But my biggest pest were possums - who loved my home-grown food as much as I did.
After a few years, I gave up on trying to keep the possums out and pulled out the veggie and herb garden and started to grow just ordinary, hardy plants. It was fun to get in and do just that... and it also made me look at succulents which I could cultivate and grow more than one of - saving me a lot of money buying more plants. All I needed to do was buy more pots and potting mix.
Then, my townhouse was going to be sold by my landlords and so I had to have the yard cleaned up, the house cleaned up and people trampling through my place during an Open House looking around. And if you've ever suffered through those things, you know people just have no respect for anything - especially if you're investment property (which I was) and I found people were helping themselves not only to my food, making offers on my furniture and clothes (thinking I was dead) but they were making off with my potted plants in my back yard too! It took 3 real estate agents to keep people under control around the place - and I also walked around to keep them from looking through my personal items (ie: jewelry and make-up - yes that happened too).
It's been a long, long time since my place was sold that way. My folks bought the place from my last landlord and I'm my own person when it comes to this place now; which is good. The garden is what I want it to be, and every year or so, it changes it the most wonderful way. I change the pots over, change the plants over, add new plants, remove old ones... I make it look better and better. But...
... my garden is always a container garden.
Even if I move from here, I'll have a container garden at my next place - and I'll be using huge containers to hold my plants out of habit. Or I'll use containers around the place to make it look quaint. However, for now, I'm using this garden to the best of my abilities.
I moved out of my parents house aged 29 into a townhouse in Woodridge, Logan City, Brisbane to find a tiny postage-sized backyard filled to the brim with weeds of all kinds. It was overgrown and I couldn't step outside without having something 'bite' me.
I had some serious work ahead of me.
I spent a good 6 months just pulling up what the landlords called 'lawn' and putting down weed killer; causing me to start the whole place to start over completely. Yes, I had a completely blank slate of a back garden... yard... it looked like something from the early 1980's - it had absolutely nothing in it except two Logan City Council drain lids and a sewage filter lid an that - my friends - was it.
We had a care-taker here at the complex who helped me out with top soil and grass seed and watering it all it, fertilising it and making it grow the way it was supposed to - but I kept on getting bindi's and Scotch Thistles. The first was a complete mystery but the second was a matter of just pulling them out at the right time... and eventually, I got rid of all 15 of them (yeah, you read right!).
The damned, Bindis? Well, it wasn't until I looked over the side fence one lovely day that I found out that I was next to what was commonly known as a Queen Patch. This is a huge round patch of the weed which had a flower sprouting out of the middle of it. I had never seen one before and haven't seen one since, but our care taker used full-strength weed killer on it and to dig up half the dirt to pull out all the weeds. It was amazing to watch - but I never got a huge infestation of Bindis again; instead, I only got a few here and there which I pull out as soon as I see them.
Once the lawn was starting to look good, I began to grow vegetables and herbs. It was great! Seeing I was from a family who grew their own veggies all the time, I got a lot of advice from my Dad and other family members on how to grow them. I also started collecting books on how to grow them as well. But my biggest pest were possums - who loved my home-grown food as much as I did.
After a few years, I gave up on trying to keep the possums out and pulled out the veggie and herb garden and started to grow just ordinary, hardy plants. It was fun to get in and do just that... and it also made me look at succulents which I could cultivate and grow more than one of - saving me a lot of money buying more plants. All I needed to do was buy more pots and potting mix.
Then, my townhouse was going to be sold by my landlords and so I had to have the yard cleaned up, the house cleaned up and people trampling through my place during an Open House looking around. And if you've ever suffered through those things, you know people just have no respect for anything - especially if you're investment property (which I was) and I found people were helping themselves not only to my food, making offers on my furniture and clothes (thinking I was dead) but they were making off with my potted plants in my back yard too! It took 3 real estate agents to keep people under control around the place - and I also walked around to keep them from looking through my personal items (ie: jewelry and make-up - yes that happened too).
It's been a long, long time since my place was sold that way. My folks bought the place from my last landlord and I'm my own person when it comes to this place now; which is good. The garden is what I want it to be, and every year or so, it changes it the most wonderful way. I change the pots over, change the plants over, add new plants, remove old ones... I make it look better and better. But...
... my garden is always a container garden.
Even if I move from here, I'll have a container garden at my next place - and I'll be using huge containers to hold my plants out of habit. Or I'll use containers around the place to make it look quaint. However, for now, I'm using this garden to the best of my abilities.
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