At last, full-blown garden time is here! Temps are staying up in the 50s at night and all is well in the land of garden. Since the last time I posted, we have actually put some of my precious seedlings in the beds. Below are some tomatoes: Beefsteak, and Heirloom varieties Green Zebra, Brandywine, and Marvel Stripe.
And also an entire herb bed: There will be rosemary, lavender, chives, thyme, lemon thyme, cilantro, parsley, sage, oregano, dill, and basil.
Not only that, but we have mesuculun and sweet peas sprouts everywhere and our first official head of broccoli has popped up as well.
We also put the tomato trellis back up, but this time we attached the two trellises at the top for more stability. I can hardly wait until that entire bed is filled with lush, blooming tomato plants! In the background of this photo, you can also the beginning of a new rain barrel. When we moved out last year, I sold my old rain barrel not knowing that the new renters (Beth and Chad) would use it. Luckily, I have another plastic barrel, so we're going to make a new and improved one. That's one great thing about starting the garden completely over- I've learned a lot and can now apply it to the new garden and the new rain barrel.
In other not-so-happy news, we've had some pests digging up a couple of our squares. First we tried putting plastic forks in the beds as a deterrent (don't ask, I read it on a forum), but that proved to be nothing for our varmint friends. Beth has since put up a barrier of plastic sheeting wrapped around pvc pipe around all of the beds, and that seems to be doing the trick.
Last thing. I was recently talking to Mr. Growbot about how much I enjoy looking at photos of the garden from past years. It really helps me remember what things I grew each year, and how different growing methods worked out. So I'm going to start posting older photos as a comparison to this year. It should prove interesting. I'm starting out this theme with some vintage (ha!) 2008 photos. These were taken on May 7th of that year, so just about a week from now.
That was the first year I had done a big garden and I definitely learned a lot from it. As you can see, I tried to plant more than just tomatoes in the tomato bed- big mistake. By the end of the summer, both the squash and the watermelon that I had tried to plant were pretty much choked out. Also, all of the little protective water bottle domes proved to be pretty pointless. They got knocked over by the wind all the time, and nothing seemed to be bothering the beds anyway. I had started broccoli from seed that year and they were certainly not the size of the ones we started from plants this year. I also had started my lettuce from seed, and it did great! That was the first thing I got to eat from my very first garden.
Until Next Time...
0 comments:
Post a Comment