The veggie garden just grew a lot -- because I put in all my seedlings/starts! It's finally consistently 50 and above at night, so I think they'll be okay. Last year I lost all my tomatoes to a late freeze, so this year I'm appropriately paranoid about paying attention to such things.
I rearranged the bricks of the overall garden to form some steps in the paths between beds. I still don't have enough bricks, but I don't care enough to go buy any. I'm sure I'll find some this summer. (I got all these bricks from a neighbor a few years ago when she redid her front walkway!)
On the far left outside the fence, I put in some perennials that I moved from elsewhere in the yard. The fall leaves had already blown over and piled up there over the winter (handily killing the grass in about a 1-foot-wide strip), and I thought it was a good way to encourage pollinators to the area! So I've got multiples of Shasta daisy, bee balm, rose campion, and okay okay I bought a nice native echinacea and native lobelia cardinal flower. OOH, it's going to look so GOOD and be HUMMING with activity!! I hope.
On the right near the fence, you can see my two Cavendish strawberry beds. I plan to move some of the new runners over to a different bed this summer (start a NEW strawberry bed with fresh plants), and take out these old plants (they do have a life span, after which they don't produce as much) -- making way to rotate other veggies into these two beds next summer.
(Can I just add, it makes me happy to think of Cavendish strawberries because the variety was developed in Nova Scotia and I've been to Cavendish, PEI! So they remind me of the Maritimes, hee hee! A bunch of strawberry varieties originated in Nova Scotia.)
The snap peas are coming along nicely. I don't have much to add other than this year I'm also trying to be better about weeding the weeds right away.
More homegrown goodness after the jump!
I had planted a bunch of carrot seeds with C., and after a whole lot of nothing, I pretty much had given up on them. Some of the packets were old-ish, after all (2021). But, like so many things in life, I just needed patience (which can be so so hard, I'm sure everyone can relate . . . right??)! Not all of the seeds came up, but I have three small patches now.
I'm not sure if I'll bother with carrots in the future. We'll see. C. was excited to try them, so I'm glad we're having some success. I'm not sure what I was thinking in my "plans", but I also feel like I wasted space on them. I guess I thought I would have harvested them by now (??!), since apparently I thought I'd use these beds for other things "after the carrots". Well guess what, I need the space now, so I interspersed other plants amongst the carrot sprouts. What was I saying about patience? I pictured the nice cool-weather carrot crop magically sprouting on schedule and giving us a lovely harvest . . . in 6 weeks. That's just . . . not accurate. Which I knew! But I'm not always super rational about these things.
On the left, the carrot bed now also houses cucumber seedlings. Next row is peppers! A mix of Cubanelle and "Little Cutie Red" or something like that. I've put tomato cages around all these plants since taking the photo.
Next to the peppers are some of my cherry tomatoes. (I only plant cherry tomatoes, because they're THE BEST! Need I say more? Why bother with anything else??) I've got Sungold, Sweet 100, and Sweet Cherry. This was also the bed I had started arugula and lettuce in, but guess what?
It's never worth it to plant arugula! Every time I plant it, the leaves are super bitter, even if it's still the nice wee baby sprouts. Arugula from the store/restaurants tastes great, arugula grown at home is GARBAGE. Can anyone explain this to me? So I'm just disregarding the arugula sprouts, and the lettuce as well because I can't even tell a difference (if any lettuce came up at all) and it all tastes gross. UGH! I think that was "aspirational planting" on my part, to be "healthy", plus I had the packets lying around from some other aspirational attempt, so I figured, eh, why not?
I have one of each tomato variety in pots on my back deck. I predict they will do pretty well there, since they get southern light and it's sheltered. Also . . . I was out of space in the other beds, bwa ha ha!!
I have 6 tomatoes (all three varieties) in another bed in the front yard. I realized I have 20 tomato plants in all!! I'm fine with that, because the girls and I can just eat them like candy nonstop on sight. So we should have *just* enough. ;)
Sadly, one of the front tomatoes already got eaten by a critter. I have some strawberries in that bed temporarily, around the edge. A critter had dug a deep hole right next to a strawberry, thankfully leaving the plant, which I tucked back in! Then A. and I discussed how I should probably put some fencing around that bed. Not even 2 hours after that conversation, the hole was back, the strawberry knocked aside yet uneaten, and one tomato start was GONE, except for a tiny stem poking out of the ground. I was so offended!! Like, okay critter, I get it, I need to fence you out. No need to prove the point. Ugh!
Then I scurried around putting up some plastic mesh fencing while it started to rain. Now it's been RAINING a lot, which I'm so grateful for, because all these plant toddlers are going to be so happy! :D I only forgot to plant my bean seeds, so I'll have to do that in a break in the rain. The beans will ALSO be going in to the carrot beds. Ha!
I'll take a picture for next time, but I also planted my new blueberry bushes and black raspberries!
Oh, and next time I'll talk about dipping your seedling roots in soluble mycorrhizal fungi, which I did for the first time this year, and I'm hoping adds to plant success!
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