More Garden & Fleurs

The flower bed between the sidewalk and the house.  The flowers you see are weeds (purple) or were already there (red).

 The other day, I gave it a good weeding and then planted some flower seeds (Red Poppies, Frosted Salmon Poppies, Mother of Pearl Poppies, & Lilac PomPom Poppies - yes, I like Poppies!) although I don't think Poppies will really grow here.  Like I said in the last post, though, this is a very experimental garden!  Later today, I'll be sowing some Aster seeds that someone gave me to see if they grow. :)

Leif and I go out to inspect the garden first thing every morning and we water, weed, and tend as needed.  I check the actual garden against my little black book, where I had drawn out where I had planted everything, to see what is growing and what is not.  It looks like my Gaggle of Gourds aren't growing at all - the areas where they were planted remain blank and empty.  The seeds are getting a little old, though - I had purchased them at our old CSA place in the spring of '07, I think.  In a few days, I'll test a few to see if they'll germinate.

The garden beds are fully lined in rock (as you can see in the above picture).  Leify and Katy helped me put all the rocks in place.  Actually, those are manufactured rocks that Caryn's fireplace is built of - I took the excess and put them to use in the garden so the lawn mower dudes don't mow down my plants!

The main bed (the long one on the right) only went as far as the sidewalk last year.  The little bed on the left is new this year, too.  In between, I left room for a little path so that I could access every inch of the garden without trampling into it.  I'm going to "pave" it with large clam shells that I've found - you can see in the above pictures where I've placed them out - clearly, I still need a lot more to complete my project!  The terracotta herb pots are in the path right now, too. I'm not sure where they are going to end up - but that's why I like them - if they're getting too much sun, I can move them to shade, and vice versa.

The pole bean trellis.
  I still have to create the sisal twine "web" for the beans to grow up, but that will be done this weekend or early next week, I reckon.

  I goofed bigtime when I created this garden bed - I dug up the patch, added manure/mulch to the mix, then drove in the bamboo.  But then I realized, after I planted, that the bed should extend beyond the stakes because the plants are planted and have to grow outside of the trellis, not inside.  So, all of the compost, mulch (and digging) in the middle part is essentially wasted because nothing will be growing in there - it will be shaded 100% and completely inaccessible once the plants start winding up the trellis.  Oh well.  Next year,or even this Fall/Winter, I might plant lettuces in there, so all is not lost :)  And it looks like one small area might not be grown over, so that maybe Leify could use it as a living fort this summer!

I counted the tomato plants this morning - there are 33 little planters that have Maters in them.  But some of those little pots have 4-5 tomatoes in them.  If they have on average, three tomatoes per pot, (let's do some higher math here, shall we? ;)) then that means I have roughly 100 tomato plants growing right now.  That's a lot of tomatoes. 

Of course, many plants will not make it past seedling (or transplanting stage) so I'm going to go with 30.  I think I'll end up with 30 tomato plants.  Here's hopin'! :)  That would be a lot of maters for copious amounts of salsa fresca, insalata caprese, and fresh pasta sauce! Mmm... Oooh, that reminds me...I need to plant more basil! :)

I sho do love to watch my little garden grow (so does Leif)...Are you bored to tears yet? ;)

Happy days.