Week three

Cucumber:

Tomatoes:

Zucchini:

Peppers:

Raised bed (peas, lettuce, green onions):

Almost finished!

Last Sunday, I finished laying the landscaping fabric and enlisted MB's help in putting up the first part of the fencing. Last year the chicken wire did a good job keeping rabbits out of the vegetables, but I didn't want to have gaps between the real fence and the wire, because that's part of what led to our weed problems. I'm hoping that lining the chainlink fence with the chicken wire will do the trick.



The raised bed is kicking ass:



On Wednesday, I picked out the veggie plants.


Moonflower seeds from EvilDucky, soaking:



Yesterday the promised rain held off and I got the veggies in the ground. Because last year my zucchini plant fell victim to some kind of wasting phenomenon, possibly caused by a nematode in the soil, I figured I'd try keeping it out of the ground this time around. Luckily, I scored a giant planter on clearance at Lowe's for a dollar:


Since I'm basically making this up as I go along, I picked my veggies based mostly on their names. And let's be honest. Boxcar Willie? That is awesome. AWESOME.

I made a map of where everything is so that as the summer goes on and my memory utterly fails, I'll still be able to figure out what's what:



First week photos!

Cucumber, week 1:

Tomatoes, week 1:

Zucchini, week 1:

Peppers, week 1:

And while I was working, look who was chillin like a very dapper villain:


Now he's noticed that I've noticed him, and is studiously ignoring me because he knows I'm going to tell him to get off the table:



And finally, today I planted snapdragons and moss roses in the little bitty corner bed by the front gate:



And added an annex onto the raised bed for herbs:


A few more buckets of fill dirt, and it'll be ready.

What I did on Friday

Someone on freecycle was giving away tansy starts, and since the mosquitoes are bad in our neighborhood and mosquitoes supposedly don't like tansy, I went to get some. I planted a bunch around the edges of the garden, which took a while but turned out pretty nice, I think. The plants look really pitiful because they were all naked in the sun for a few hours while I got the landscaping fabric rolled out. I'm hoping the rain we had today will perk them up:



The lady was super nice, and also gave me a big chunk of lemon balm, some lilies, some little bluebell-type flowers, and two yellow iris starts. Hot damn! I planted all that stuff in our front bed, which was mulched but otherwise untouched:



And some bonus pics. Morning glories from Danger & MacGyver, planted in the tiny corner bed by the front gate:


Huge mess of huge-ass bush pieces that I had to cut up:


Robins' nest on the carport gutter. It's cute, but I'm half afraid one of them will attack my head when I take out the trash or something. Gah.