Gardening 2014

I decided to go ahead with gardening now that we've found out well be here for at least most of the year. We will be moving in either November or February. We need to get some things sorted out to figure out when we can move for sure. The one thing that is certain is that I am extremely excited to move to Fort Walton Beach, Florida! I've already been browsing houses just to figure out what options are out there. We will probably be buying our first house when we move. For a few reasons: on base housing will only give us a two bedroom. It will cost over $1000 a month for that two bedroom. If we buy a three bedroom off base that is $100,000, it will cost us less monthly even with utilities factored in. We will be there for at least four to six years, as well. The housing that we've been looking at off base in that area seems to range from about $89,000 to $115,000. It is really affordable! Unfortunately, that's because the housing market there was hurt badly in the housing crisis. The one major downside of buying a house there is dealing with the hurricane insurance and hurricane prepping. We've specifically been looking at houses that are already prepped for a hurricanes (special windows, wind breaks, etc.).

Anyways, back to gardening! I'm not going to be spending much on flowers this year. I'll mostly just be doing seeds. They are more affordable. Plus, the area where I can plant flowers is not very conducive to gardening success. Poor drainage, low lighting, all that fun stuff. I'm not willing to put the money in to fix those problems. I am attempting a container garden in the back, though! This is my first attempt, so we'll see where my successes and failures will be! The back of the house is the only area that gets a decent amount of sunlight, so that's where all the containers will be. My biggest worry is the deer from the forest our house backs to. Luckily, we have found a used fence that somebody is getting rid of. We need to wait for them to come out and mark all of our lines before we can install it, but we'll at least have a fence this year. That'll help keep the deer out (hopefully), and also will allow us to let the dogs outside without holding the leashes every time. We also plan on getting a little baby pool for them. The only downside is this means we'll have to mow our own lawn. Bummer! It was bound to happen one day.

Here is what I have so far: 

The Front Garden "Before"

The Front Garden "After" -
I have since also tilled the soil/raked in the old mulch and planted some seeds. 

My container garden in the back - all herbs and veggies that I've started from seeds.

I'll try to post more pictures as things start growing!