I'll plant and water, sow and weed,
Till not an inch of earth shows brown,
And take a vow of each small seed
To grow to greenness and renown:
And then some day you'll pass my way,
See gold and crimson, bell and star,
And catch my garden's soul, and say:
"How sweet these cottage gardens are!"
- Edith Nesbit, the poem Seed-Time and Harvest
from the Pomander of Verse, 1895
Now that I got my Murhpy's law rant out of the way, I'm ready to talk about all the wonderful work I did over the weekend. I'm feeling much better now, almost back to my old self although my back is going to take a little longer to recover. No worries though, it will recover, it feels better with each passing day.
The bulk of the work during the weekend was transplanting all the tomato seedlings. I have about 30 of them, 13 went into the ground and the rest was planted into the big containers on the deck. We have a huge deck which receives a ton of sunlight and it would be a shame for all that space to go to waste. That's why last year I started planting into the containers and filling up all that deck space.
The bulk of the work during the weekend was transplanting all the tomato seedlings. I have about 30 of them, 13 went into the ground and the rest was planted into the big containers on the deck. We have a huge deck which receives a ton of sunlight and it would be a shame for all that space to go to waste. That's why last year I started planting into the containers and filling up all that deck space.
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| Tomatoes, sweet yellow pepper and cayenne pepper in containers |
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| Tomato plants in the containers |
The picture below is of a veggie patch on the side of my house. It's sectioned in four. At the very top are tomatoes (10 of them), on the very right broccoli (still very small, hardly visible from distance), on the bottom you can see the red lettuce and on the left which is not quite visible is my herb garden. Parsley, oregano, rosemary, echinacea, chives, sage and cilantro live here.
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| Tomatoes, red lettuce and broccoli |
10 of the cucumber plants are present in the picture below. There is another bed on the side of the house where I planted another 8 and then several in the containers on the deck.
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| Cucumbers |
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| Romaine Lettuce |
Once I plant a green bean, I always put a border around the plant (small planting container with a bottom cut out) to discourage pests such as earwigs. If earwig problem is particularly bad, as it was couple of years ago, I smear some petroleum jelly around the container edge. Earwigs hate going through that. You would be surprised to know how much damage earwigs do. It's quite astounding. Two years ago they got rid of two rows of carrots I planted.
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| Green bean plants |
The picture below shows one of the prime spots in my garden. Centre top are the green beans, top left are the strawberries, right below them are the brussels sprouts (still small but growing) and right in the centre are my onion soldiers. The very bottom is where calendulas (they are still tiny), day lilies and some hostas grow as well as couple of blueberry bushes which can hardly be seen because the bunny chew them almost to the ground during winter. Uh, oh. They will recover though. Oh yes, and on the very right, right beside the gazebo I'll plant couple of sunflowers. They love it there.
I absolutely love this stage of gardening. It seems like my work never ends these days, there is always something to plant, weed, water etc, but I can hardly call it work because I enjoy it so much. I guess who ever said "do what you love and you will never have to work a day in your life" was very right. I think it was Confucius.
Namaste