Garden (what we're starting with)

Last Saturday I took before photos of the yard and gardens at our house for future reference. Yesterday I planted the vegetable garden (with some space saved for things that need to be planted in a few weeks).

(No, I didn’t plant sticks, I used them to remember where things are.) This photo was taken around 3 pm; our whole back yard is partly shady, at least until the trees have more leaves. I’m going to try some tomatoes and peppers back there, and put others in pots in the front yard, which is sunnier.

About half the compost pile is what I swept off the roof last weekend. The rest I raked out of the vegetable garden and front flowerbed this weekend. Lots of trees = lots of leaves.

Recordkeeping:

Planted 4/25:
cabbage
lettuce (2 kinds)
kale
chard (sadly, with white stems, not colored ones)
spinach
rutabagas
peas
broccoli
parsley

I wanted rhubarb but Meijer didn’t have any. Nor did they have rabbit fencing, so there’ll be a trip to Lowe’s next weekend.

In May I’ll add beans, eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers. And more herbs. This year’s kind of an experiment to see what grows.

I’d like to grow some sweet corn but there’s no room.

Our front flower bed looks pretty scraggly right now. There’s a hosta at each end that’s just coming up, a hydrangea that was pruned to the ground but is getting some leaves, and another woody-stem thing that’s either dead or still sleeping. I bought two caladiums for some color, and the store was giving away forget-me-not seeds, so I planted those as well. Kind of a random collection of plants. It just needs to look like I’m attempting to make it look nice, before I annoy the neighbors by sticking pots of vegetables in the front yard. 🙂

At least the front yard has grass. The backyard is too shady and so is full of weeds (mostly creeping charlie) – that’s a project for another year.