Gardening Glass

I love growing flowers and “easy” plants like rosemary, basil, and the occasional tomato plant interspersed in the flowers. I love making garden stakes and glass flowers to add some fun to a garden space. Over the years, I have shifted mostly to perennials that attract hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies. It is fun, low-stress gardening. Growing a vegetable garden was out of my reach. It would take too much time and I really didn’t feel capable of growing vegetables.

Veggie time

That was then. I decided that there is no better time than now to take the vegetable garden plunge. (Along with many others during this uncertain time.) I live in a northern climate and we are still below freezing many nights, so I have had time to learn and start some seeds indoors before it is time to plant them outside. The garden area is tilled, the dirt is ‘warming up’ under tarps, and… whoa… the seeds are sprouting!

What are these plants?

I have paper tabs on my little starts to remember what they are and when I planted them. (Pro tip: use a permanent marker. lol) That won’t work outside, and since I am a very novice gardener, I do not know what all these veggies will look like as they grow. ? So I made some glass stakes for easy identification in the wilds of my soon-to-be-garden.

Veggie Stix

Like all new things, these stakes took some experimenting. I created the veggies using my torch. The kale had some problems during fusing. Since I made these first ‘testers’ in this photo, I have hand-mixed some colors for a more realistic eggplant color and I pulled some different colors for my broccoli.

Veggie learning

I recently had visited with my neighbor who works at a garden center and is an avid gardener. She gave me lots of helpful tips to get started.

I am also taking this 6-week online class: Start Your Own Edible Garden. It is free with my local library card. Many libraries offer similar classes and my library is also allowing library card sign-up and renewal online during this time of quarantine.

Garden chat

Are you a gardener? Join in the conversation on Instagram or Facebook! Tag me and show off your garden spaces.