Meet our November Pink Pot Ambassadors: @suburban.gardening.couple!
Describe your garden.
Our garden is a four-year-old developing landscape, cut flower, vegetable, and fruit production garden. When we moved into our home, there was not a healthy plant on site! We spent the first summer just cleaning up the yard from debris, dying plants/trees, and broken fence pieces. Our goal has been to slowly create a backyard landscape oasis. We now have a garden shed, a mini fruit orchard, 13 raised beds for vegetables, a privacy hedge on the left & right side of the yard planted with arborvitae and nine barks, areas for rows of cut flowers, and other various gardens that are still in development.
Tell us about the first time you ever gardened.
Matt remembers as a kid gardening with his dad. He would help him with planting and harvesting from his vegetable garden. Katie credits Matt for being the one to really get her into gardening. It started with containers first, then moved to in-ground planting, and now she can’t get enough of growing cut flowers!
What is your favorite combination using Wave Petunias?
This season, they performed wonderfully with the lantana and orange hat cherry tomatoes. We mixed up the colors and created a fun pattern, and even got a few hummingbird visitors. The hot colors against our light-colored siding were such a happy sight.
If you could have one gardening superpower, what would it be?
Matt’s superpower would be to be able to plant anything regardless of plant spacing needs.
Katie’s superpower would be the ability to change the plants zone requirements and have it be able to fit into our garden.
Share your secrets! What’s the best gardening hack you know?
Not really a hack but more of a recommendation… buy an auger in multiple sizes. We love our power planter augers for planting bulbs and small annuals. Shameless plug – we absolutely can’t live without Ryobi cordless earth auger. It has helped us to plant the hedge of arborvitaes, our flowering & foliage shrubs, and our mini orchard. The time and physical labor of digging that many holes has paid for itself!
Would You Rather
…only be able to plant in-ground or only be able to plant in containers?
…in-ground to let the plants really mature to their fullest and not be constrained on their space. And keeping it hydrated would be easier!
…never have to weed again or never have to water again?
…never have to water! Although it is enjoyable at times, it is for sure a chore. We’re slowly working to eventually have drip, especially in cut flower and veggie garden areas.
…do without gardening tools for a year or do without plant food for a year?
…do without plant food. Matt always wants to have the right tools for the job. They make the job easier and more efficient, and it’s a new toy to play with! haha
We love that you have a joint gardening account. Tell us a bit about what each of you do in/for the garden!
Matt’s role in the garden is manual labor, watering, fertilizing, and organic pest management. He mainly tends to his vegetable garden. Pruning it, harvesting from it, and then further preserving the harvest through canning. He finds watering to be relaxing and fertilizing makes him feel productive. He enjoys being able to harvest from the backyard. His favorite vegetable is, of course, tomatoes!
Katie’s role in the garden is having a vision and layout for the landscape planting, containers, and cut flower gardens, and also weeding. She actually enjoys weeding and keeping the garden clean. Certain areas definitely get more attention than others, but it is so satisfying to get weeds with a long taproot.
What’s the funniest disagreement you’ve had relating to the garden?
Funny question and tricky one to answer, but probably the funniest disagreement is how many bags of compost or mulch each other needs for our respective areas of the garden. Usually Katie underestimates and Matt overestimates, but eventually it does all get used! If you know them on Instagram, you know what their favorite store for compost & mulch is… Menards!