Well, while the word count continues to lag this week, I did manage to get a good start on the garden this morning. It's a fair size. Had originally paced it off at about 30' x 8', but I think it may be more like 8' at the short end and 12' at the far end. Am helping out with a local church community garden, so won't have to keep on top of the whole space by myself or take all the produce home to my aparment kitchen. Should be fun!
My mom and sister were nice enough to give me an abundance of seeds to try and to help me design a lay out. Here is the plan:
Got a bit of digging in the soil to plant several types of lettuce (little gem and a mesculun mix with red beet greens), french radishes, and prizm kale.
And worked at putting up a bamboo teepee for the lazy wife pole bean seeds I'll plant in about three weeks.
There is enough bamboo to make a long tent style A-frame trellis at the far end for the several types of squash and cucumbers, but my scissors wasn't strong enough to cut off the branches to clean the bamboo stocks up a bit. Will need to come back later with a clippers and twine to work at putting it up.
At that point, thought I better make sure my back is going to tolerate the digging before I try my hand at too much more. Having sudden flashbacks to two years ago when I dug a potato trench, only to have a back spasm severe enough I couldn't get out of a chair the next morning. Oops.
So headed back home and got to work planting seeds in yogurt cups and peat pots.
Planted seeds for early white bush scallop squash, pattison golden marbre scallop squash, hasta la pasta squash, sugar crunch cucumbers, carmen peppers, Mary Yoder's heirloom tomato, pesto party basil, purple basil, genovese basil, and purple zinnias.
Still left to plant from seeds-- italian parsley, a second type of kale, moonglow yellow tomato, brandywine tomato, comfield pumpkin, and delicata squash. Plus an abundance of flowers-- celosius red, orange cosmos, marigolds 2020, and about ten other kinds of zinnias (unicorn, oklahoma ivory, lilliput, cupid, pink senorita, cut and come again, benary giant salmon rose, queen lime, and cactus chrysanthemum mix, zinnia 2020). The flowers will all go in an 3 foot by 8/10 foot area.
As plants from one of the other gardeners- two broccoli plants and 1 kale plant (third type). And need to track down seeds or plants for broccoli, cauliflower, and brussel sprouts for sowing later in the season, as well as seed potatoes.
Hopefully will turn this bare patch of earth into a hearty and pretty garden space!
