Irises

The irises in the front garden started opening on Wednesday. They are such a beautiful dark purple. The ones in the back garden just started opening this morning and they are a slightly lighter shade of purple. Beautiful!

I need to get a book on outdoor plants because I feel like a dork asking my neighbor to identify what's growing in my garden. In my defense, I didn't plant any of it and she is a professional landscaper, but I still feel silly. Then, to make matters worse, I forget from year to year! So I think I need a book so I can look these things up on my own. Then I might even learn how to care for them. That could come in handy :)

Good growth

There was no frost the other night, but better safe than sorry anyway.

I'm finding myself weirdly proud of my vegetable plants and go out to check on them daily. I like to coax the pea plants towards the trellis and deliberate about which, if any, plants need to be thinned out. I still feel guilty about thinning, as though I may be ruining a perfectly good plant life. But I remind myself that it's for the good of the veggie community :) I hope!

Earlier this week I added two tomato plants and two pepper plants that Julie brought for me. I put them where I planted the cucumbers, since they don't seem to be growing anyway. I wonder if I do something wrong with them. The cukes were the only thing in last years garden that didn't even sprout. Hopefully the tomatoes and peppers will make good use of that space.

The carrots also seem to be growing much slower than the rest of the plants, but maybe that's normal. I think I need to get out the seed packs again and double check that. They are definitely growing though, so maybe we'll get something.

Frosty night?

A quick thanks to my backyard neighbor! I looked out this window this evening and noticed that she had EVERYTHING in her backyard covered -- even the clothes line! Not sure what that's about :/ Anyway, it prompted me to check the weather and, of course, I found a frost advisory. We went out and covered the veggie garden with a tarp and jersey cotton sheets. I hope it works and/or doesn't frost. I will be very sad if I loose my garden.

Weeding

I try, but I just never find the time for weeding. I think the long side garden is going to be a jungle again this year. I was hoping to stay on top of things, but no such luck. I've been a little better about the front and back gardens at least. I think I've weeded the front two gardens twice now. We have tulips that are budding, but not as quickly as last year or as quickly as all the neighbors' gardens. Oh well. Maybe they will be blooming and beautiful for baby boy's party this weekend. That would be a nice touch.

We also have beautiful purple and white flowers all over the lawn again. Alan mowed once but they are back in force. They are really quite beautiful so I don't mind that they cover a third of our lawn. If only the dandelions didn't cover another full third!

Pumpkin seedlings

We have two pumpkin seedlings. Yay! I think my garden is going to be a little mixed up. Probably didn't need to replant it that second time. Now I think I have peas and beans mixed together and the carrots are coming up too, although I planted beans in that area the second time around. We'll see what we get :) I'm just excited to have anything growing. I did a very hard thing this morning and thinned out the pea seedlings. It was hard because 1) I'm so excited to have anything growing I hate to pull those little green things up and 2) I had no rhythm or reason for my process, just pulled some here and there. I wasn't brave enough to thin them to 6" apart, but I did about 3" or so. If/when more grow I'll probably thin them again. I didn't do any thinning last year and that probably contributed to my lack of garden success. Certainly not the whole problem, but probably part of the problem.

I took these pictures last night because I was excited. It was supposed to rain today and I wanted to get some pics to put here on the blog.

Two little pumpkin seedlings.

Carrots. I thought it was grass at first, but they are coming up right in the area I planted carrots, and no where else in the garden, so I'm thinking they must be carrots that survived the frost.

The big ones are peas (I thinned them out this morning, this pic was last night) and the little ones are green beans. Should make for an interesting garden :)

Seedlings

I was looking at the garden yesterday and noticed some little seedlings. These must be the peas from round one because it's too soon for round two seeds to be peaking their little heads through. Now if we can just get some rain. It's been in the forecast for the past few days, but hasn't actually materialized. Normally I'm a-ok with that, but this year I'd really like my garden to grow. I might get out the hose this afternoon, that's one sure-fire way to have rain tonight :)

Compost

I started a compost pile when we were outside the other day. It's pretty simple with 4 posts (iron or whatever with the green plastic coating stuff) and some mesh that I bought at the garden store. The packaging says it's great for vining/climbing plants, keeping critters out, and compost containment. We'll see. The mesh is very thin and I suspect it may not hold up to a full compost pile, but it was good enough to get started. I threw in a bunch of dried red pine needles and dried garden waste. I also started throwing in some food. I need to find a list of what food is good and what isn't though. I think I saw that peanut butter isn't, and meat products, but I need the definitive guide. Here are some pics:

Round two

We replanted the garden today. It was nice. We had lots of extra seeds (for most things, no more carrots) and both kids helped. The good news is that we had fun and I was able to rearrange things a bit so the climbing stuff is together now and, hopefully, not blocking sun from the lower stuff. The bad news, kind of, is that some of the peas apparently had been growing a bit. They weren't very big and hadn't poked through yet, so I suspect that if we hadn't replanted they probably wouldn't have done well anyway. I left all the tiny sprouts in the ground though, so we may have some mixed up veggies. I'm just hoping we have veggies, orderly or mixed up or whatever!

*sniff*

They didn't like that one cold night. Guess we'll be doing some more planting in a few weeks.