HANGING POCKET GARDEN

Do your kids ever just enjoy hanging around with your friends? I know mine do and so do some of our garden herbs!  It may sound a bit wacky but we hung up my garden with a shoe organizer! It’s funny but clever!

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What's Needed:
 - Hanging shoe organizer and hooks 
- Plastic trash bag 
- Soil 
​- Plants or seeds

The first thing to do is figure out where you want to put your hanging herb garden. Look for a sunny spot.  Behind a door leading to the outside or a wooden fence should work perfectly. Wherever you decide to hang it, be sure it’s being help up there tight.  Use strong hooks or even wire to attach the shoe organizer. Remember each pocket is going to be filled with soil, plants, and water so it needs to be pretty strong. 

Once the shoe organizer is hung, do a water test. Check to make sure water will drain out by pouring water directly into the pockets.  
 
If the water just puddles up but doesn’t drain out, use a small knife to put small holes at the bottom of each pocket.

Also, depending on where you hang your shoe organizer, you might want to add a sheet of plastic or big garbage bag to help keep the area from getting too wet.

​Now fill each pocket with soil.  Fill it almost all the way up to the top.  Think of each little pocket to be like a small flowerpot.  Leave an inch or two from the top empty.  
 
We added a couple pinches of vegetable fertilizer to each pocket to help give our plants a head start. Fertilizer adds extra nutrients (or vitamins) to the soil that the plants love to eat!
 
Now choose your plants or seeds and plant away.

We started by planting raddish and parsley seeds. It was kind of funny, because as we were planting we started to forget which pockets we had planted the seeds in. A quick solution was to mark the pockets with a piece of black tape to help us remember. It would be bad to plant too many things in one small pocket.  The roots wouldn’t have room to grow!
 

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We then added in other herbs.  Mint is perfect to grow in a pocket or two.  The roots grow like crazy and will take over your yard if you’re not careful.  By planting them in a pocket, you can have the yummy herb without it taking over the rest of your garden.
We also added in some oregano and parsley to use in spaghetti sauce.
Once everything is planted, be sure to watch each pocket. Then sit back and wait for it to grow.