The Garden is *Almost* In

We have had a lot of rain this spring and, of course, the rain usually happens on the weekends when I'm off work. So getting the garden going this year has been a challenge. However, as you can see, my early plantings are loving it. In the picture above I have red cabbage, green cabbage, spinach, swiss chard, kale, and three kinds of lettuce.

Jeff has been working on getting the ground dug up for me. Last weekend I went to the Bloomington Farmer's Market and bought hot pepper plants, tomato plants, and zucchini plants. Today I planted flower seeds along the southern most edge of the garden: sunflowers, nasturtiums, and verbena. Here's a picture of my perennial coreopsis that grows in one of the front corners of the garden:


My fourteen year old mowed the lawn so I used the clippings to mulch the plants that are in the ground and established. Working out in the garden today was difficult. It was really hot and humid and miserable. So I didn't do everything that needed to be done. Other things I still have to do to consider the garden ready to go are planting bush lima beans, planting green beans, trimming around the garden fence, and mulching the walkways. I'm getting close.

Here is the garden this evening with the shadows being cast as the sun is low in the sky:


Today's weather:
High temp: 90 degrees
Low temp: 70 degrees
Very sunny and humid.

Weeding in the rain

I've never been the prissy kind of girly-girl who was afraid to get her hands dirty (hence the name of my blog). I figure if you go through life trying to keep from getting your hands dirty, you miss out on an awful lot. My hands are dirty today.

It started raining Friday evening and has continued to rain off and on since then. It held off for a little while yesterday, but rain has never been far away. It is frustrating when it rains on the weekend when you desperately need to give some attention to your garden. This morning when I woke up around 7am, we checked the weather. Weather.com said storms would be here around 11am. There was my window of opportunity. So I put on some okay-to-get-dirty clothes and headed out to the garden. By 8:45am my fingers were covered in mud.

All this rain has not only helped my seedlings germinate, it has brought weeds. Actually, weeding while it is raining is kind of a good idea. Wet earth holds onto plants much less tightly than dry earth. With rubber garden shoes on, MP3 player on shuffle, and rain gently activating my natural curl ;-) I set about weeding around my peas and the perimeter of my garden along the fence. I was done by 10am. Let the storms commence.

In other garden news, yesterday we went to the Bloomington Farmer's Market and bought my broccoli seedlings for this year's garden. The picture at the top of today's blog entry is one of those plants in its new home in my garden. While I did some browsing of other plants, I think it is still a bit too early for the other plants I have planned. I will be returning to the farmer's market when I'm ready for more plants.

The peas and lettuce, which had germinated a while ago, are growing. Some of my other seeds have popped up as well. Here are some of the beet seedlings:

And here are some of the sunflowers Dylan planted:

I am so excited - my garden is coming back to life!

Today's weather:
High temp: 61 F
Low temp: 57 F
Rain, thunderstorms, and wind.

Planting sunflowers and root crops

Today has been another beautiful day and I was lucky enough to spend the afternoon in my garden. I even managed to get Dylan to help me. He's happier than he looks...it's just the sun in his eyes.


We decided to plant sunflowers all along the back (northern) edge of the garden. They are Mammoth Russian Sunflowers that grow to be 8-12 feet tall and the flowers are 10-12 inches in diameter. These will be Dylan's project. If they grow as they're supposed to, I imagine he'll be really excited once they start towering over us.

I also decided to plant the root crops I'd been meaning to plant ever since April 3. I smoothed out the bed designated for these crops and then planted one 5' row of St. Valery Heirloom carrots, two 5' rows of White Lisbon bunching onions (green onions), and four 5' rows of Tall Top Early Wonder beets. I grew one row of beets last year as a trial crop to see both how easy they were to grow and also how easy it would be to get my family to eat them. They turned out to be easy to grow and I managed to get everyone to eat them. Dylan and I even liked them. My only regret was not planting more. So this year I am planting lots more and plan to can what we don't eat out of the ground. Green onions is another crop I didn't have enough of last year so I planted two rows and then later in the season I'll plant more.

Today's weather:
High temp: 74 F
Low temp: 48 F
Sunny with slight breeze.