Garden of Iniquity

I am back from my work trip last week and returned to a mountain of things to do. Unfortunately I have done almost none of it.

My kitchen herb garden from Mountain Valley Growers arrived (an Xmas gift from the Fossi) while I was gone. I decided to mount two window boxes outside the back windows and bought some basil plants and some seeds (catnip, cilantro) too. However, I will probably plant the herb plants themselves in one or more large pots. Since they include rosemary, thyme, sage, oregano, and tarragon it would be nice to try and save them. I don’t want to buy any more pots though, but it would make it easier to keep them over the winter if I did 9″ pots so I could put them on the window shelves in the kitchen.

This week I have to plant the tomatoes, the plant sale plants, and harden off the herbs so I can get them planted.

Next week I will plan to plant peppers, eggplant, and maybe cucumber. The eggplants may end up in containers but I believe they will do well there.

I need to get the radishes out so that I can use that space for something, maybe zucchini? Also the spinach did not sprout (maybe planted too deep) so I will just re-use the space for peppers rather than waiting any longer.

I also discovered that the vegetable bed stops getting sun at 3:30PM. This is due to the leafing out of a tree in the neighbor’s yard. Sun from 8AM - 3PM equals 7 hours of sunlight, hopefully enough for everything to produce well.

Planted half row (3 feet) of Tenderpod. Dug a trench 2″ deep, sprinkled seeds 1″ apart or so, then covered the trench and watered.

Planted half row of Triomphe de Farcy, in the same way.

Created a bean teepee out of 4 6′ bamboo stakes sunk into the ground in an 18″ square. Planted 4-6 seeds of Asparagus Yardlong around each pole. I plan to thin this to two plants per pole.

Research - call tree guy to discuss crabapple tree in front yard
Call landscapers to get estimates for retaining wall
Plant stuff from plant sale
Plant beans
Plant tomatoes, peppers, cucumber, zucchini, and eggplant - after 5/18
Mulch stuff

I need to plant my beans. I have yard-long (asparagus) pole beans and two kinds of bush beans. I have been agonizing over how I will trellis the pole beans. I bought some bamboo stakes but they are very skinny. I am planning to make them into two teepees and place two plants per pole. If they can’t support the weight, I guess I will have to prop them up somehow.

Also the Friends Plant Sale is this coming weekend. I don’t know what I am going to buy and I still need to find a cart-like device to take with me.

Today I created two more rows in my bed with 4″ furrows between then. In the first (southern) row, I planted spinach. In the second row, I planted leaf lettuce in the eastern half and radishes in the western half. In both rows I broadcast the seeds in the row then raked gently to cover, then watered well.