On Mother’s Day, I spent the afternoon taking this:
to this:
I encountered a most vile species of weed– this grassy stuff actually fired tiny little seeds everywhere whenever it was brushed! I literally had seeds stuck to my skin and caught in my eyes. Yuck. Instead of throwing it into my compost bin, I actually bagged it up to put into the trash. I don’t want that stuff propogating, as much as I can help it!
After I got out as many of the weeds as I could, I used our tiller tool to loosen the soil.
I opened up our compost bin and spread the new soil on top of the garden.
We weren’t able to get to a store to get plants that day, so on Tuesday evening, we took a family field trip to Home Depot to get our plants. I decided during the course of last year’s garden that starting tomatoes from seed isn’t quite working for me right now, so I planned to buy seedlings this year. We got four varieties– three for the in-ground garden and one for our kids’ container on the deck.
The garden layout is essentially the same as previous years’, in which the cucumbers and zucchini are on the left, and we have six tomato plants (two of each variety) are on the right.
After the jungle that was last year’s garden, we decided to lay down weed-preventing black fabric. The day after we bought our plants, I went out and spent an hour or two getting the cloth laid, the tomatoes installed, and the zucchini and cucumber seeds planted.
…and then I added mulch.
Garden planted and mulched! Tomatoes from left to right: Tami G (grape), Golden Jubilee (heirloom), and Red Beefsteak (heirloom)
Cucumber seeds (background) and zucchini seeds (foreground) planted. I cut small holes in the weed-blocking cloth for them.
My daughter and I took a quick few minutes to plant a tomato in a pot on the porch an evening or two later. V helped me to move the soil around the plant and water it.
I was delighted to find, just a week later, that all of my seeds had sprouted. I had been pretty worried, since we got a couple big rains, that the seeds may have washed under the weed-blocking cloth… but thankfully, everything seems to be in place!
zucchini sprouts
cucumber sprouts
My tomato plants were looking healthy, happy and growing, too!
One of my main goals with the garden this year is to make sure to prune my tomatoes regularly to keep them under control. I really don’t want a buggy jungle this year!
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