Monday, May 12, 2008

Busy weekend

We started off Saturday morning with a trip to the local nursery. Local gardening wisdom is that you wait until Mother's Day to plant and with this being Mother's Day weekend, the nursery was packed. And it is a fairly large nursery so the amount and variety of plants was a little overwhelming to me. Fortunately, we went there with specific things in mind to help us focus. If we hadn't, we might have been there all day!


Here are two of the eight tomato plants I bought. These two are Romas. We also bought two Cherokee Purples, two Better Boy, and two Beef Hearts.


I also bought five herb plants. In this picture are the basil, chives, and cilantro. I also bought sage and thyme. These are all in the two herb beds that border my back porch. It's close to my kitchen for easy cooking access.


And look at these! These are some of the Red Norland potatoes I planted three weeks ago. I've got tons coming up. A few of my Irish Cobbler potatoes are also coming up although they are a later variety. I need to add some soil to the sides of these plants. That's on today's "to-do" list after I get my errands finished.

I also transplanted 13 bell pepper plant seedlings (yeah, I know it is a lot, but I assume some of them will die). I transplanted two cucumber plants. I also planted my second succession planting of lettuces, spinach, carrots, and green onions.

Jeff added mulch to the walking paths in the garden. It looks so much more attractive now and hopefully the moisture and temperature will be more controlled. We had wanted to use straw instead of a hardwood mulch, but it is almost impossible to find it this time of year. We decided we are probably going to go no-till anyway from now on, so these walking paths will be walking paths in the future. I realize with hardwood mulch there is a risk of it decomposing and leaching nitrogen from the soil, but we'll keep a close eye on it. I'd like to add mulch around the base of some plants, but I'm not sure what to use that won't hurt the plants. And even if I figure it out, I'm not sure where to buy things that are more organic. Most of the stores around here carry only your traditional (i.e. non-organic supplies). I have work to do.

It rained all day yesterday after I got the plants in on Saturday so they should be off to a good start!

Today's local weather:
High temp: 63 F
Low temp: 46 F
Sunny and breezy

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