Day 146: Garden Milestone

I know I promised more indoor posts and fewer "here are lots of green things" posts but we have reached a milestone worth sharing. Last night, we finally finished getting all of the veggies into the garden. Phew! This is what all of the identifying, transplanting, digging, and multiple trips to the dump for free compost were for!

Doesn't look like much, you say? Give it a couple of months and then come visit and share in the bounty.

We definitely have more veggies planted than we have space for. And while the soil seems quite good (so many worms!) and we've got about 1000L of compost mixed in, this is definitely going to be an experimental year of figuring out what works well, what needs more/less sun or space, etc.

For those not very good at identifying plants based on small seedlings photographed from afar, here is a diagram based on what Garrett came up with back in April when we first started the seeds.

We ended with pretty much this exact layout except for the broccoli/pepper area. Instead of two rows of each, we have two measly pepper plants, six broccoli, four lettuce, and one watermelon. This was the result of not very good germination rates for the peppers and broccoli combined with some variety we found at the Little City Farm seedling sale. I only managed to fit 12 tomato plants into their area even with our less than the recommended 3 feet of spacing. And we still had 14 seedlings left over! Well, eight since Garrett's co-worker dropped by today for a few.

We're not expecting much from the potatoes, which were planted from some old potatoes we had that started sprouting back when we were at the apartment! Garrett planted a few of the sprouts themselves and then took off the sprouts on the rest and planted the actual potatoes. The ones that were sprouts planted are doing very well, but there's no sign of activity from the planted seed potatoes. Like I said, experimenting. As for the other ones we planted right into the ground, the beans, peas, and corn are all coming on strong. Unfortunately, there is some kind of critter in the neighbourhood that seems to have a taste for corn so we've lost a few already. We replanted a few more seeds to replace the ones that got torn out but I think I need to get comfortable with the idea that other creatures also enjoy fresh vegetables. Finally, we haven't seen any sign of carrots yet. A couple of days after we planted the seeds, we noticed something had crawled through the rows and tossed around a bunch of the soil. We replanted a few but it's possible the damage was done. As our gardening book says, "If you bury this seed deeply, you'll never see carrots."

Sneaky critter: "Corn! Must destroy."	Marigolds nestled in the freshly transplanted tomatoes.

Hard at work.

Surveying our domain.

You may notice in the background of those photos that the daisies are in bloom, the peonies are coming out, and the lupin and irises are on their way out.

It's actually pretty neat to see how the garden cycles. First the tulips were in bloom, then bleeding hearts, then the violets and grape hyacinth and star of bethlehem, then the columbine and lupin, then irises and daisies, and now the peonies are starting and the phlox, sweet peas, and rose of sharon (the giant bush we misidentified as magnolia thanks to The Internet being wrong... or just a bad internet search) are still to come. As a side note, I didn't know the names of most of these plants just a couple of months ago. Oh, the power of experiential learning. You really are the world's greatest teacher, aren't you?