Garden Update

Things have been going wild in the garden.  Here's a picture of the Salvia and Sage competing for who can take over the garden completely.  The bumble and honey bees are loving all the little flowers though. 

Maybe, just maybe, we'll have some strawberries bigger than a pea this year. They usually have green baby strawberries like this around mid July. Grow little berries! And critters stay away!

I planted some purple Irises this fall, and they are already blooming like crazy.  Irises are one of my favorite flowers.  We had some at our old house and I loved them. I don't know why I waited so long to plant some here. It's not like we're been living here six years or anything!

Speaking of our old house...we drove past it this weekend. It was the first time I'd seen it since we moved out. The current owners painted the trim this super ugly ultra bright blue and ripped out the side garden!!! I was so angry. Mrblocko had to remind me that the people who lived there could do that, because it was THEIR house and THEIR garden. I told Mrblocko I could be angry if I wanted cause the current owners were dumb, and that side garden with the flagstone walk way was awesome. Why don't people know beautiousness when they see it?!

Ok, Rant off.

Back to the garden for the house that we actually live in right now.

For Mother's Day I told Mrblocko I wanted a raised garden.  I found this little 4x4 foot kit at Home Depot that seemed easy enough to assemble.  It was designed for non handy folks like us I think. 

I wanted to get the dirt at Menards because I thought it would be cheaper, plus I had this $10 rebate card, and we had a bag of cement to return that we wound up not needing for the fence.  Dirt wound up being on sale!  AWESOME!

Blockette's school had a plant fundraiser and the plants arrived on Thurs.  From her school I bought 3 different tomato plants (Roma, better boy, and grape), and 2 pepper plants (Sweet and bell).  I knew that those 5 plants probably wouldn't fill up the tiny garden, so I thought we would look at Menards, since we were there already, just to see what they had.  Their plants were on sale too!  They had packages of  6 plants 2/$3.  That's a great deal around here for plants.  If you buy them from the greenhouse, they usually run about $3 a piece!

So I went a bit hog wild and got a pack of cauliflower, kohlrabi, and broccoli. 

The plant packages didn't say how big they were going to be, so I planted 3 kohrabi, 3 cauliflower and 6 broccoli in my little garden.  I'm hoping I didn't plant them too close. 

I decided, instead of just chucking the remaining kohrabi and cauliflower plants, to plant them in my side garden.  The side garden only gets about 3 hours of sun a day, so we will see if that is enough for these little guys. 

Hopefully, the neighbors won't mind the garden.  We put it in the front yard. I'm hoping it won't look too tacky.  Our back yard is full shade, all day so there was no hope for any kind of veggie garden thriving back there.  The spot where we planted the raised bed gets morning shade, but sun the rest of the day.  Hopefully that won't be too much sun.

If this garden does well, we will buy another raised garden kit this fall or spring. The kits can be combined to configure the raised bed in whatever dimensions you want.  The plan is to just make the existing bed longer.  We have enough room in the front on the side to make the garden 4 feet wide by 12 feet long.  I figured it would be best to start out small so I don't get overwhelmed.

Oh, we also planted a blonde raspberry bush sort of near the fence.  This area gets enough sun for lilies to grow, but we will see if it is enough for a raspberry bush.  I don't even know if the darn thing will grow or not. It was in the plant section of Mejiers marked half off.  The "bush" is essentially two sticks poking up out of the ground.  I'm not holding out much hope for them. 

The directions on the package said to plant them as soon as it starts to get warm.  On a normal year, now would be the perfect time to plant, but with our crazy weather, the bushes should have been planted in March.  I guess that's why they were so inexpensive.  IF they do somehow grow, it will be about two years before the bushes will bear fruit.

Wish me luck!