Raised Bed Gardening

For those of you who don't know, my mom and I grow and sell cut flowers...of course with the help of dad and Dynamo. It takes all of us to make it happen, believe me! Mom grows the majority of the flowers at her place. My job is to grow additional celosia and zinnias to add to her vast array of other beauties! We don't have fantastic soil where we're at, so Dynamo built these beautiful raised beds for me in our side yard last year. It's still a work in progress for us, but it's coming along.

Grass in between the beds is quite a pain, so I decided to try something new this year...peanut hulls! It's hard to tell by the above picture, but the brown material that looks like mulch is actually the by-product of the peanut shelling process...the shells! Many people use it in many different ways (i.e. horse bedding, composting, soil amendment, etc.). I decided that since it was free (as long as we picked it up) it was worth the try to see how good it was at keeping down the grass. If it works at my house the plan is to use it at mom's too! I'll keep you updated.

The weather this year has been really strange. The flowers are growing very slowly as you can see in the picture above, but the flowers around my house are doing great! I included a couple of pictures from my yard below. I love flowers and working in the yard! It's therapy for me!