A New Year, a New Garden

It's that time of year again... when we pretend to have a green thumb. Last year we skipped the gardening. We had signed up for a full CSA share. And with being pregnant and all, we decided we didn't need the additional responsibility of taking care of a garden. But this year we've decided to give it a try. I'm not expecting too much success our first year, but we'll see how it goes. All I really want are fresh tomatoes. This year we've gone much bigger than we have in the past. We are no longer in a townhouse. And we no longer have cute garden boxes. We've gone much bigger.

20x30 feet to be exact. This could either go really well. Or really bad.

The plan is to not go crazy this year. Again, all I really want are fresh tomatoes. With the abundance of stinkbugs in the areas, I'm not sure how successful we'll even be. Mike wants hot peppers, so we'll be planting a bunch of those. And herbs. Because I need fresh basil with the tomatoes. The rest of the stuff, I don't care as much about.

This was the original plan:

I used this handy garden planner to help plan things out. Well we've already abandoned the plan and just started planting. :) The raspberries are no longer located in the garden because apparently they can get unruly. We are skipping spinach. We are skipping peas, but possibly doing beans. And everything is moving locations. We will see how much actually gets planted.

So far we have some nice broccoli plants in the ground.

Zoom in? Sure.

We bought broccoli plants from the store. We had started some seedlings but they haven't been doing so hot. And since it was time to start the cold weather plants we just decided to buy plants. We're not ashamed.

We've also planted some kale and spring onions. We planted those seeds directly just this week. So... time will tell.

The rest of the plants are still incubating in the house.

The seedling got off to a bit of a rough start. We started seeds in egg cartons and they were doing great. Then we thought they'd need more space so we tried transplanting them and they did not like that at all. Only a few survived so we've basically started over. When it comes time to plant we may just end up buying more plants :)

Fingers crossed this goes well.

Garden Update

Can I be honest? I enjoy having our little garden. But there comes a point around late summertime when the garden creeps me out a little bit. The plants start to get unruly. The tomato plants get huge and take over the yard. And then there's the bugs. I hate bugs. And spiders. I hate those too.

This past weekend while I was out watering the plants I was noticing how nice the garden was looking! The plants are still small enough where they are remaining in their designated little areas. No crossing of boundaries. No dead veggies in the yard. You know, that sort of thing.

Okay, the lettuce looks a bit crazy Yet plentiful!

 

This year we also tried spicing things up a big with a trellis. A trellis for green beans! Those little vines amaze me- how they manage to find their way around.

And just for completeness here are our potted herbs. Recall we went the potted plant route for easier access. I'm pretty happy with that decision. Meatball has also finally learned to not eat the herbs, so that's a plus.

Herban Garden

We had some intense rain this past weekend. It just so happened that said rain downpoured shortly after we had just transplanted our seedlings to the garden. We were nervous for our seedlings. They are not very big. And they look fragile. But turns out they are surprisingly resilient.

Green bean sprout

We are coming up on a week later, and everything still looks alive. Hooray!

To celebrate my blossoming green thumb I decided to make some herb labels for the potted herb garden. My seed packet labels (shown here) got drenched, soggy, and not pretty. Turns out I've had a packet of small wooden garden stakes sitting in my craft room since last year. Keeping things simple, I painted them white and labeled with my trusty patio paint.

I was going to spray on a quick coat of sealer for added protection but quickly got lazy. The stakes cost me probably about a $1 plus change, so the less time spent on this little project the better. Frankly, I won't mind if they only last me one season.

I'm all about function, and they have one job.

Confession: that mint plant was the one plant we bought this year. That's why it looks so hearty next to the small sprouts of basil. It's a crazy variety of mint: orange mint! We haven't tried it yet, but I'm pretty excited about it.

Garden 2012

In addition to it being Easter weekend, this was the weekend we decided to start our garden and do our yearly landscaping. Once a year our front yard looks awesome. Then, slowly, we forget to water things, weeds start sprouting, and we give up.

But once a year our yard looks like this: fresh flowers! It's a little hard to see, but those are fresh flowers and mulch under the tree.

Now for a street view.

Every year we seem to try out a new annual. This year we planted a bunch of marigolds. I mean they are every. Where.



And I'm well aware that they smell terrible, but I don't care. I hear that they repel mosquitoes, which is really what I was after. I had pinned this handy article on Pinterest and they were the only plants on the list I could easily find at Lowe's. So we'll see what happens.

As for our garden, our major accomplishment this weekend was weeding it. It was completely overtaken by weeds. Anyone else have those weeds that seem to shoot seeds when you touch then? After weeding, we mixed in some manure and hummus (which seemed to work awesome last year) and planted some spring onions, spinach, and lettuce. No pictures, unfortunately, since, the garden is still a heap of dirt.

We'll save the tomatoes and peppers for when it gets a tad warmer. We have the seedlings going in our kitchen and Mike has been diligently tending to them.

Instead of planting herbs in the garden again, we decided to change it up and use pots on the deck this year. Last year the herbs got so devoured by the tomato plants that the basil was the only one that really took off. So hopefully we have better luck with pots. Plus, by being on the deck they are easier to access. You know, instead of taking that grueling walk down the deck stairs!



And last but not least, our new tenant. This guy has been building a nest under the deck. He's woven a piece of balloon and ribbon into a nest, which leads me to believe he's a party animal. Plus he's got some tasteful decor.