Saturday Morning is for Gardening

Check it out! I got all the remaining grass out of my new bed and got all the rich soil in! And it was so much easier since the rains.

I will probably get my transplants in tomorrow. I want to spend a little bit of time planning exactly what will go where. I think I'm only going to plant three rows. In my first bed I planted four and now that I see how big the plants are growing I can see that was cutting it really close.

I'm also worried that some of the herbs I'll be planting will be very attractive to the neighborhood birds. I have basil, dill, cilantro, oregano, parsley and mint. I'm especially concerned about the mint. I think I may leave that out of the bed and just plant it in a container. The birds already got to it once. Plus from what I've read it sounds like the mint is going to grow all willy nilly and try to take over the plot. I'm considering planting the mint in a container and then planting the container in the ground to prevent it from spreading.

I'm also going to plant some leftover onion, cucumber, zucchini and tomato seedlings. And I have a freshly sprouted yellow squash plant and peas, too.

What am I going to do with my zinnia seedlings? If I have room in the new bed I'd love to put one or two in the ground, but I don't want to attract butterflies. Butterflies mean caterpillars, and caterpillars do a lot of damage.

Also- very exciting- I've got my first flowers on the zucchini plants! Hopefully, I'll have zucchini really soon. And check out the yellow squash in the foreground of this pic!

Prepping the Bed is Hard Work

This is the bed as it stands at the moment. I woke up this morning and worked in a bag of last year's top soil and two enormous bags of gardening soil. I took a break to head to the garden center and pick up a few more bags of hummus + manure and two more enormous bags of gardening soil. Those two bags are still sitting in my trunk because I haven't figured out how to get them from the trunk to the garden while my cousins are still asleep. But once those are in I'll be ready to do some planting.

I've been evaluating my seedlings trying to figure out which are ready and which still need some time. I definitely overplanted so that will work in my favor. If I transplant a couple prematurely I'll have some back ups standing by if it doesn't work out, my understudies. Though I'd like to avoid transplanting too early if at all possible. I wish I had planted my seeds earlier this spring, then they'd all be ready. Anyway, the zucchini looks ready and maybe the cucumber too. And the pumpkins won't be far behind.

Zucchini is on the left, yellow squash on the right

Happy Earth Day

Nearly everything I have planted is growing taller and taller by the hour. The only varieties I haven't seen sprout yet are the pumpkins (which I expect to break the soil's surface today or tomorrow), the dill, and the mint.

Predictably, the zinnias I planted in the little plastic greenhouse germinated before the ones I planted in an open air tray, as has the basil.

The lettuce seedlings that I thinned out seem to be doing well. I was worried I'd disturbed the root system in the process, but they seem fine. I also trimmed some of the zucchini plants. In the photo, they're the second row from the top right corner. You can see the ones that I clipped on top of the tray. The leaves and stalks are much thicker than any of the other plants' and they really seemed to be inhibiting one another's growth sitting in such close proximity. So, clip, clip, clip!

The big underdog of the bunch has been the tray of tomatoes, pictured in the white tray on the bottom left. I left them out in the cold rain early on, but now there are 13 little plants growing. They're tiny and so frail looking, but I'm still rooting for them.

Wilting Spinach

It has been a very busy day in the garden.

I woke up and planted the parsley seeds I'd been soaking all night. Then set out for the Home Depot and purchased some 8 foot long wooden planks to frame my garden bed and some soil and peat. I also solicited some advice from the other shoppers- home gardeners sure are a friendly bunch.

My uncle brought the leveler and power tools and together we built a lovely frame. We planned out how we'll level the bed, since it is a bit sloped. More photos to come. We may need to build a second bed for some of the plants that need a lot of room. I'm envisioning a pumpkin patch. That shouldn't be such a hard sell.

This was the second sunny day in a row and the warmest day we've had all year. Temperatures reached the mid 70s and I knew my babies where feeling it when I noticed my spinach seedlings passed out in their tray. I moved them to the shade and am hoping for the best.

Everything I planted April 3rd is sprouting! And the first seed of the April 12th batch is just shy of peaking through the soil's surface. And the winner is- cucumber!

Send happy thoughts to my spinach!

Update: It has been a couple hours since I moved the plants into the shade and the spinach seems to have mostly recovered. All but a few of the sprouts are standing up straight again.

AND I forgot to mention that the zucchini has sprouted and they look amazingly solid. You can see them on the lefthand side of this pic. The photo was taken a few hours ago, now several of them are standing up and open.