I had a few questions sent to my instagram account after last month’s post about gardening! So Today I thought I’d share some of my favorite gardening tools and resources with you.

*Cultivate: Regular readers know that I’m obsessed with pretty much everything Cultivate What Matters, but being part of the release team for the Cultivate book is part of what drove me to jump into gardening. Lara talks about being an unlikely gardener and I relate to that SO MUCH. The lessons she mentions in that book are always reinforced when I spend time in my own garden, and they are lessons I think would not have sunk in quite as deep if I hadn’t decided to take the leap and get my hands dirty DOING the gardening thing instead of just reading about it. That’s why I am extra excited to share that Lara Casey, author of Cultivate and founder of Cultivate What Matters is offering a special Gardening 101 class next week. CLICK HERE for more information and to reserve your spot if you’ve wanted to try your hand at gardening!

*MIGardener: I first found MIGardener through a youtube search about pruning my zucchini plants. I then went down a rabbit hole of old videos (while I was still in my nursing days when I had more time where I had to sit down/finding the time to watch videos was weirdly easier… than now…) through the youtube channel I found so much education and advice and then I was thrilled to support their business and buy their excellently priced seeds after that. While we get most of our garden seeds from saving seeds or from the library, I love that MIGardener has some really unique varieties– we especially love their salad mix and their purple kale!

*A Water Wand: We bought this hose attachment (a water wand with different nozzle settings)- about a year ago and it has been really efficient and helpful for selecting different settings for different needs in the garden. You don’t need anything this fancy though! My son uses an adorable dinosaur watering can he got for his birthday a few years ago, and my daughter uses a mini watering can we got for just over a dollar. And before I had the hose attachment I punched a few holes in the cap of a used milk carton! It went slower because I had to stop and refill and the water didn’t come out as fast, but it got the job done without drowning my plants! Still, I love the time I get to save now!

*Raised gardening beds: After a first go around with a few containers, we decided to grow more food and invested in one of these raised garden beds which gave us three 4×4 sections to try out square foot gardening. We did a lay out of a straight line as that fit best with sunlight patterns in our garden and we did make our middle bed twice as high so that we can have more soil there and roots can grow deeper. This is where we put our tomato plants (though we’ve had little success with those, I’ll admit…) and our giant sunflowers which produce very deep roots.

*Garden Shade: While most of the US is gearing up for starting their garden season, my “Spring” garden had to be planted in early February to even have a shot at bearing fruit before the high heat hits. IT’s a race against time because those triple digit days can just scorch our plants. To try and delay that, we love this Agfabric garden shade material to keep our plants alive just a little longer in the crazy Phoenix heat. Even if it just buys us another few weeks, that’s a few weeks of produce and fresh flowers we get to enjoy.

*Floret Flowers Seeds: Floret has a wonderful book on cut flowers and maybe the most beautiful instagram account I follow. Their seeds are pricey but worth it because the blooms are stunning and they come with a ton of seeds. I’m especially in love with their zinnias! (education, seeds, inspiration)

In the years to come, I hope to get a composter and maybe another raised bed or a few more containers… little by little we’re investing more in this sweet hobby of ours. Do you have any favorite gardening tools or resources?! I’d love to hear about them.

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