How Does Your Garden Grow?

[akirlu]

So, it's been almost a month since I papered over a section of lawn and turned it into a lasagna layered garden plot.

Back on the day I planted it, it looked like this:


As of last week, it looks more like this:


In the interim, I've put in marigold and petunia starts, as well as Brussels sprouts. One of the musk melon starts fell afoul of Unknown Mammals, and a bunch of the nasturtiums and one zucchini have germinated and sprouted up and are going gangbusters. The dill and snapdragon seeds still show no sign of doing anything at all. As you can see, the bits of lawn that I did not paper over adequately are coming up again between the beds, and I need to smother that before it gets out of control. A couple of the tomato plants were yellowing a bit at first, and I worried that Don might be right about too much nitrogen, but then they started putting out lots of small, new, dark green leaves so I think it may have been just a touch of transplantation shock.

I have to confess, I was mentally sneering at my one Early Girl, because it was the absolutely dead last of my first set of tomato plants to actually flower. Now I have to take that back, because while it might be last to flower, it was first to set fruit. Go figure. So now there are baby tomatoes:



Also bitsy baby cucumbers:



And I've expanded into a second bed under the front window, which has more tomatoes, cauliflower, lupines, salvia, and a gooseberry (though you can't see the gooseberry or much of the lupines in this shot):



I've poked down seeds for more dill, as well as bachelor's buttons and more nasturtium in the new bed, and we'll see what crops up. I feel like I can count on the nasturtiums, anyhow.



So, on the whole, I am pleased. I can't seem to resist picking up more and more petunias -- I'm a sucker for the variegated pinwheel kinds -- but at least with the beds set up, the plants are actually going in the ground instead of just dying in their little black nursery pots.

Comments

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Very nice! It's turning out so well.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'm just so pathetically grateful that I have been able to get things in the ground without having to spend days breaking rocks first. The newspaper layers make it look a bit messy but at least now I'm actually getting stuff planted, which I wasn't very often before. I would get all excited about bulbs or whatever and buy them and then they would just sit around quietly dying while I tried to get up the gumption to go till enough of a plot to plant them in.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'm enjoying the heck out of it, which makes a change.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

It's been on my mind for a few years now, because it's something my family have done since long before I was born. But finding the right resources and inspiration made all the difference.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

My mother used to grow bachelor buttons, I liked them a lot. Plus the sweet peas, we had lots of those on a grid leaning against the outside of the house in Edmonds and could just pick and pick. Before she died (Virginia Beach), she stopped being able to do heavy things, so she got my brother and me to put in a fiber rectangle with lots of seeds in it and that way we had a lot of different flowers. Either those aren't made anymore, or I can't remember the right name.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

The pre-seeded sack cloth sounds like quite a clever idea. I've never heard of it before.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

They were pretty common -- we could just go to the nursery and choose from different flower groups -- but it doesn't look like they have them anymore.

Oh! I tried new words and it's a Flower Garden Roll. This company makes only those, but Google had a lot of other companies, too.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Forgot to thank you for the link. I may try one out next year. Really too late for this year, though.