DIY: Milk Jug Garden #DIY

Ever since I moved in with my fiancé and his children, I’ve been brainstorming ideas for our front and back yards. My plan is to create two spaces that show who we are as a family. (I also want my country roots to shine through, as well.)

When I first moved in with my fiancé, there weren’t any flowers in the front yard. There wasn’t anything…(except some dog poo.)

In other words, it lacked personality, and it didn’t stand out like other front lawns in our neighborhood. I knew, though, with a little love and care (and less poo) that we could turn the front yard around and make it pleasing to the eye.

Our first front yard project came about when my fiancé stopped in at the consignment store next to his work and bought me an antique milk jug for Mother’s Day.

He knows I’m a country girl through and through and knew I would love it. And I did. In fact, I’ve always wanted one for a garden, so as soon as I saw it, I began to visualize what I would do with it.

Since I had visions of a beautiful garden dancing around in my head, my fiancé took me to a greenhouse up the road from our house to find out what types of plants and flowers would work with the ideas I had. By the time we left, we were $40 poorer, but it was worth it. It would have been more but the woman we spoke to while shopping shared with us some money-saving gardening tips, so our bank account didn’t take as big of a hit as it would have had she not advised us.

Once we got home from the greenhouse, I changed and got down to business.

Next, I put some packing peanuts in the bottom of the milk jug as directed to by the woman at the greenhouse. She told us to use ones that weren’t biodegradable so we wouldn’t have to use as much cow manure. (It just so happened that I still had some packing peanuts left from a package I’d received several weeks earlier, so I was all set.)

Next, I placed some newspaper on top of the packing peanuts to separate it from the poo.

After that I dumped soil on top of the newspaper before placing the flower-pot on top. (Sidenote: It was only several days later that I noticed the flower-pot was sinking lower and lower. It turns out the peanuts I thought weren’t biodegradable actually were. For the time being we have the flower-pot sitting on the ground beside the flower bed until we can afford to buy more manure.)

I then created a half circle out of rocks.

Then I used the Moo Poo and filled in the half circle. (If you’re worried about using cow poop soil, don’t worry about it stinking. I promise I didn’t walk around smelling like cow patties for the rest of the day.)

As for the placement of the other flowers we bought, I followed the directions (or so I thought) that the woman at the greenhouse gave us.

For some reason I can’t remember now, my fiancé made another trip to the greenhouse. While there, he showed the woman the above photo, and she had him show me where to reposition the flowers, which is why they aren’t in the same spots in the photo below.

Updated garden photo:

As you can see, the Snow Crystals have filled in a bit. I can’t wait to see how they look in another month.

Future Plans:

Now that we are pretty much done our first project, I can think about my second one. We are planting a garden around the well house in the picture below. I even want to put a small fairy garden around it.

But before I can do all that, I have to paint the well house. I’m thinking baby blue and white with a black roof, but I’m not 100% sold on that color combination yet.

In addition, to our other garden project, we are also planting a small vegetable garden. Below are some tomato plants that my dad gave us to plant. I can’t wait to eat vegetables I’ve grown myself.