Sunday, April 18, 2010

Spring planting season

Back when we moved into the new house before new year's one of the things we were really excited about was the raised garden beds in the back yard. The neighbors mentioned that the previous owners once had tons of fruits and veggies coming out of the gardens so we couldn't wait to get going. There were originally 5 beds but we whacked one in order to enlarge the yard a little for the kids. That left 4 well-overgrown beds that we had to work with. Maybe a month ago we stipped the weeds off the top of one and planted 3 rows of corn plus some random wildflowers on the end. This weekend we saw the Home Depot had a buy one get one special on 3" - 5" seedlings and couldn't resist. We wanted to get some tomatoes and hot peppers but somehow ended up leaving with the following:

- 2 hybrid tomato plants

- 2 heirloom tomato plants

- 2 thyme plants
- 2 rosemary plants
- 2 parsley plants
- 2 basil plants
- 2 blueberry plants
- 1 gallon of paint

Notice the lack of peppers. Apparently tracking down nearly two year old while picking out plants has as adverse affect on remembering the list. They were really great in the store, though. They have been awesome at listening and behaving in public places and have really never let us down. Especially now that they can talk so well and have definite opinions on how things should be and what they want to do.

We actually followed through and got everything in the ground today. Having recently picked up a copy of Golden Gate Gardening, we were relieved when they say to start with a small piece of garden and don't bite off too much. That made us feel so much better about seeing our haul from the deeps only taking up the ends of a couple of beds. We'll see how it goes but hope to just keep reclaiming garden square footage and adding more veggies every month. We still have 3 beds (about 100 sq ft or so) left to transform from weed haven to functional garden, pending successful completion of Phase I. I'll let you know how it goes. Once I take a couple pics of the current setup they'll show up here as well.

As always, here's your picture of the month: