I'm going to be honest here: the yard situation is making me pretty depressed. Normally this is the time of year I look forward to the most, but some new realizations about our yard have made gardening life stressful.
1. We don't have as much yard as our first house - I know, we were super excited about this fact when we purchased our current home, but now that I'm trying to get into the planning stage of a garden, I miss my 10' x 25' garden. If I replicated this space in my current yard, there would be no yard. Now, that doesn't necessarily sound like a bad idea to me, but with a kiddo, we want him to have some running room and possible a playset.
2. Our yard faces west - I didn't think through how important orientation is to the "sun" factor. The area I wanted to put the garden - up against a fence like our last house - won't work. I timed the sun and after 1-2pm, the fence casts a shadow so this area only gets about six hours of sun a day. It's simply not enough for sun-loving plants, like squashes and beans. Our previous house had a southern exposure so sun was never a problem.
3. Garden shed debacle, which you can read about here (Update coming soon).
Since I can't resolve any of these matters quickly, we went ahead with what we have, planting on Mother's Day. In our largest raised bed, we planted three tomatoes: Early Girl, Cherokee Purple, and San Marzano (paste tomato).
In the smaller bed, I planted a Sun Sugar Cherry and three bell pepper plants (Early Summer). The peppers were a bit of an impulse buy, so I simply picked up three of the same variety.
In one of the strawberry planters I have transplanted strawberries from our yard, the other has a Bush Early Girl. I wanted to experiment with its size, so I'm giving it a whirl. I also have spinach (Bloomsdale) and lettuce (Buttercrunch) planted and going strong.
In the plot by the back fence, I only planted carrots (Rainbow Blend, Danvers Half Long) and beets (Early Wonder, Golden). My husband has put a couple watermelon (Sugar Baby) back there as well, but shocker - they are already dead.
And they are dead because - the one year I didn't wait until Memorial Day - we got snow right after we planted. We did our best to cover everything, and thus far it looks like everyone survived but the watermelon.
I'm still going to try a zucchini by the fence, since it should grow anywhere. And I got some containers to put cucumbers and sugar snap peas (hopefully this weekend), which is a bit of a late start, but I have my reasons....
1. We don't have as much yard as our first house - I know, we were super excited about this fact when we purchased our current home, but now that I'm trying to get into the planning stage of a garden, I miss my 10' x 25' garden. If I replicated this space in my current yard, there would be no yard. Now, that doesn't necessarily sound like a bad idea to me, but with a kiddo, we want him to have some running room and possible a playset.
2. Our yard faces west - I didn't think through how important orientation is to the "sun" factor. The area I wanted to put the garden - up against a fence like our last house - won't work. I timed the sun and after 1-2pm, the fence casts a shadow so this area only gets about six hours of sun a day. It's simply not enough for sun-loving plants, like squashes and beans. Our previous house had a southern exposure so sun was never a problem.
3. Garden shed debacle, which you can read about here (Update coming soon).
Since I can't resolve any of these matters quickly, we went ahead with what we have, planting on Mother's Day. In our largest raised bed, we planted three tomatoes: Early Girl, Cherokee Purple, and San Marzano (paste tomato).
In the smaller bed, I planted a Sun Sugar Cherry and three bell pepper plants (Early Summer). The peppers were a bit of an impulse buy, so I simply picked up three of the same variety.
In one of the strawberry planters I have transplanted strawberries from our yard, the other has a Bush Early Girl. I wanted to experiment with its size, so I'm giving it a whirl. I also have spinach (Bloomsdale) and lettuce (Buttercrunch) planted and going strong.
And they are dead because - the one year I didn't wait until Memorial Day - we got snow right after we planted. We did our best to cover everything, and thus far it looks like everyone survived but the watermelon.
I'm still going to try a zucchini by the fence, since it should grow anywhere. And I got some containers to put cucumbers and sugar snap peas (hopefully this weekend), which is a bit of a late start, but I have my reasons....
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