Garden

We currently rent a house with a garden lot. When we looked at the house for possible renting, back in July 2011, it was overgrown with weeds, but had a few plants (zucchini, tomatoes and basil). Instantly, I began dreaming of having a big, organic, heirloom garden. For the past few months, I have consulted many sources in order to know when to plant my seeds. However, it was consistently too cold for me to be outside in the wet dirt, so how could a baby plant possibly survive? It was also increasingly difficult to clear out all of the weeds. It had been overgrown for many, many years. It also has a significant amount of poison ivy growing in the fencing and there must be a nearby yellowjacket nest. I get swarmed by yellowjackets if I go out in the afternoon!

But, this weekend Mike and I beat back much of the overgrowth, which was aided by the fact that much of it mysteriously died on it's own in the last week. Last weekend I planted the leek and cherry tomato seedlings. Today, I planted seeds for sugar snap peas, Swiss chard, kale, carrots, cabbage and zucchini. I started basil and Brussels sprouts seeds in my kitchen window, to plant later.

Fortunately, my landlord (who was once a master gardener) stopped by this afternoon and assured me he never planted things prior to Memorial Day, though the weekend before isn't a bad idea. Oh, I was so relieved, since all of my sources told me I was two months behind!!

So, here's some pics in the garden's current state:

the whole plot, note some of it is still quite wild

I have markers set for each vegetable

I laid out paths through some of it, mostly to kill weeds without having to dig them up! There's still quite a bit of weeds in the garden, but there's enough removed that I could plant stuff this weekend.

Here are my cherry tomatoes, leeks are growing just to the left of them and cabbage is planted in the corner.

There's a little plastic pond back there, where frogs have been nesting for years. Earlier this year, it was filled with eggs and then tadpoles. I'm going to keep that area fairly wild, mostly to make it a frog habitat. To make it more enticing, I threw an entire packet of "butterfly mix" flower seeds around there.

The entire list of what I'll be growing this year (most are heirloom varieties):

Chantenay Red Core Carrots
Giant Musselburgh Leeks
Sugar Ann Snap Peas
Black Beauty Zucchini
Flamingo Pink Swiss Chard
Genovese Basil
Dwarf Siberian Kale
Black Cherry Tomato
Premium Late Dutch Flat Cabbage
Long Island Improved Brussels Sprouts (not an heirloom variety)