Memorial Day- Completed the planting!

Today I finished the planting and got the rest of the wood chips for the garden.  I am all done now.  Just need to let everything grow.  I received my Burpee order yesterday after three days shipping.  My tomatoes were not happy when I took them out.  They were weak and sad looking.  I watered them and left them in the sun.  Hopefully they'll bounce back soon.  I also got two of my sweet peppers.  My mom got my jalapenos and one more sweet pepper from the garden center. 

So here's what I've got planted in each square:

Two squares are empty.  I am planting cilantro later in the summer.  It matures quickly, and I want to harvest it before it goes to seed.  I hope to be able to harvest it the same time I harvest everything else for salsa. 

I may put something else in the other empty square, or else just plant two squares of cilantro. 

2nd Weekend of May part 2- planting!

I wasn't planning on doing anything to the garden today, let alone plant.  I thought it was still too early, but I went to my mom's for Mother's Day and she and Dad planted everything this morning except peppers and tomatoes.  There's no frost in the 10-day forecast and the farmers are planting.  So while our average last frost date is May 20, I decided to go home and plant this evening.  I don't have everything yet, but I did have carrot and cucumber seeds, and my Opalka tomato from Jung.  We also went to the Garden Center today (kind of a mother's day tradition).  So I bought my herbs for the herb garden and four basil plants, and decided I'd go home and plant them.  I was racing the rain, though.  The sky turned overcast and kept getting darker as the storm got closer.  I really wanted to get everything in before the rain. 

I was able to beat the rain, and Gavin helped me plant the basil and cucumbers.  I did the carrots since the seeds were so small.  I planted two squares of carrots, 16 per square, and two squares of cucumbers, two plants per square.  I planted two seeds per hole, though, in case one of the seeds doesn't germinate.  I can thin them later. 

I dedicated four squares to Basil because I want to make and freeze a lot of pesto.  Mackenzie loves it, Gavin tolerates it, so we're making it. 

I planted my Opalka tomato.  It turns out that there were four seedlings in that little tray, so I only planted one.  I hope it makes it.  It's so little.  It's supposed to be a good indeterminate paste tomato, but also flavorful for eating.

I also bought a "Minibel" tomato, which is only supposed to grow about 12".  The plants were already 12" and flowering, so hopefully I get some good results from that.  It's more of a fun little experiment, really.  New tomato introduced this year, so I want to try it.  Fun concept for someone who can only container garden.  The tomatoes are supposed to be cherry tomatoes, not sweet.  I don't know what kind of production we'll get out of it.  I moved it and the potatoes inside the fence of the garden.

And finally, I bought my herbs for the herb garden.  The only concern I have is whether there's enough sun in front of the house.  That's the west side of the house, so that bed doesn't get sun until the sun comes over the house.  I had chives from last year that survived the winter in a container and my mom brought me some of her oregano.  I also planted lavender, rosemary, lemon verbena, curly parsley, and lemon thyme.

I may mulch around these plants.  Not all of them will survive the winter (most won't) so I'll have to replant next year.  But if I mulch around here it'll be more visually appealing.  Haven't decided yet.  maybe some decorative rocks or something.  So, a quite productive weekend all in all. 

2nd weekend of May- Fence gate and more wood chips

Today I had two goals:  I wanted to get the fence gate done and I wanted to get the rest of the wood chips laid down in my garden.  We accomplished the fence gate, but still need about a wheelbarrow's worth of wood chips.  Mike and Gavin went to the compost site and got more, but just not quite enough.  Gavin insisted on being the only one to scrape the wood chips from the back of the truck bed to the middle where I could reach them with the rake.  Took a little longer, but how can I say no to his desire to do some manual labor?  When we were done, he took a broom to the truck bed to get all the rest of it out.  He was a good little helper today.

I don't think I'm going to be able to get the rest of the wood chips next Saturday because we're going up to Green Bay for my marathon, and Mike has a drill weekend, so he won't be home.  Sounds like it'll have to wait for Memorial Day weekend, which is also when I plan to plant. 

The garden is doing well.  I've been watering, and it seems like the peas grow a little each day.  Most of the seeds germinated.  A few of the radishes didn't, but I'll plant more of them when I harvest this first batch.

So the fence gate was an interesting task because we didn't really know exactly how to make it or install it with the metal fence posts we have in the garden.  But what we ended up with will work, while maybe not the prettiest gate ever made.  It has character, which makes it unique, so therefore I like it.  We used some of the 1x2 cedar boards I bought for the trellis.  Turns out I don't need as much wood for the trellis, so I had extra.  When we put the diagonal cross piece in, it ended up skewing the sides a little, so we ended up with a door that was not quite square.  Add that to the not-quite-straight fence posts, and we have some gap.

We hammered 3/4" staples to attach the fencing to the frame. 

We attached a piece of the 1x2 cedar board to a metal fence post that had holes in it with 1/4" bolts.  We attached the door to the cedar board with two hinges.

We put another metal fence post in where the gate would latch, but it was one of the old ones, and didn't have the holes.  We were also out of the cedar boards, so we were having a hard time figuring out how to latch the door.  Mike cut down some pines last year and had some branches on the wood pile, so we took a longer one about 3 inches in diameter and used that.  We attached it to the post with wire.  There was no using bolts this time since we didn't have any holes in the post. 

We used an eyebolt latch to hook the gate to the pine branch.  Not the prettiest, but again, it works. 

So now we have a gate, and yes, it's crooked.  But like I said, it adds character.  It might not be as noticeable when I get the wood chips and fill in under the gate. 

Then again, maybe it will still be noticeable.  But at least we have a functioning gate with a nice little rustic appeal.  It's definitely unique.  No one else will have one like it!

In other news, I got my order from Jung today.  I ordered an Opalka tomato, an indeterminate paste tomato, and a Sweet Baby Girl tomato, a cherry tomato for Gavin.  What I received was an Opalka and a Super Heavyweight pepper. 

So I'm hoping that they will send me my Sweet Baby Girl tomato when I get a hold of someone there.  If the Jung order shipped, it must mean my Burpee order will ship soon, too.  I have several tomatoes and peppers coming from Burpee.  My biggest challenge in the next two weeks is keeping these little seedlings alive before planting time. 

First weekend of May- Wood chips and fencing

This weekend, I didn't plan to do much with the garden, but we ended up doing more than I thought we would, so I'm pretty happy about what we accomplished.  It's still too early to plant, but we have a woodchuck or two or three in our yard, and last year he got into my garden despite our best efforts to block and trap it.  (We kept catching these two baby raccoons.)

Getting the fence up was a priority for me, especially because we went and got a load of wood chips on Saturday, and I needed the fence to be up before I could get all the wood chips situated the way I want. 

The LaGrange township has a composting site, and while I had never seen it, I read an article where some high school kids did some volunteer work on trails nearby a few years ago using wood chips donated from the LaGrange composting site.  So I was really hoping I'd find wood chips there because then I wouldn't have to buy them.  They are only open on Saturdays from 10-3, so we went, me thinking we were just going to see if they had them, but Mike with the idea that we were going to bring a load home (which I didn't realize until we got there).  They had a huge hill of wood chips, so I was really excited and we brought a truck bed load home, me thinking we'd need to make several trips and would probably not finish it this weekend due to the need to finish other errands and of course, we had put the fence up first.

So we came home and unloaded the wood chips, and we had more than I thought we did.  I won't need another full load to finish up around the beds. 

We didn't accomplish anything more on Saturday because of all the rest of the errands we had to run, but on Sunday, we decided to put the fence posts up.  Our friend Chris was coming over to help put up some dry wall, and while we waiting, I thought maybe we could get the fence posts up.  That wouldn't take long.  We were just finishing up when Chris arrived, so we decided that while we were out there, we'd take advantage of Chris' help and get the fence put up.  It didn't take too long.  It's not as pretty as I'm going to want it long term, but it will get the job done this season.  Maybe if I expand in the next year or two to three or even four beds, then I can put up a more permanent fence with wood posts and a gate.  We are going to put a gate in this year, but we haven't quite figured out how to make it yet and attach it to the fence posts.  Currently the fence is just hooked to itself.

You can see we didn't get one of those posts straight.  But that will be remedied when we put up the permanent fence.  It's okay for now.  The wood chips will extend a foot past the fence, so I won't have any grass growing up along the fence that I have to trim.  I'm going to put mulch (or maybe use wood chips, they are free after all) around the big tree stump to the right of the garden and create a little flower bed or something there.  I'm going to cut out a bowl in the top of the stump and put some potting soil in there to make a planter.  Maybe put some geraniums and ivy in it.  It'll be pretty.  I'm also going to put mulch or wood chips under the bushes to the left of the garden so that I can avoid mowing at all in that corner.  But that's another task for another day.






Oh, and my peas finally sprouted yesterday.  It took two weeks, and we've been checking every day, but yesterday we had two up.  My radishes, which were only supposed to take 4-6 days to germinate are not up yet and it's been 8 days.  I think last week's cool, rainy, overcast weather slowed things down.  We hadn't seen the sun for almost a week!  This weekend we had two sunny days, not really all that warm, but at least the sun was out.  Hopefully we'll see more seeds germinate this week.