All beds have been planted

Everyone in my area waits until Mother's Day to plant their tender vegetables, but most frost charts for our area list the last frost as April 30th. So even though it's a week earlier than I usually plant,  I decided to tempt fate and plant my vegetables.  I don't want to mislead you and let you think it's warm out. No, there is a chill in the air, but there has been enough sun that the soil has warmed up nicely.
So as of yesterday, every bed in the Potager has been fully planted.

Today I discovered that something has been eating my newly planted basil!

The two affected plants were right next to each other, so I'm wondering if the purple plant had something on it when I bought it home from the garden center.

Both plants were doused with insecticidal soap, as were all the other basil.

It doesn't take long for pests to find a vegetable garden!

I planted five each of the purple basil and regular basil, six tomato plants, 9 sweet peppers, one chili pepper and three jalapeno peppers, herbs and seeds for beans, cucumbers, squash, lettuce, radishes, chard and marigolds.

Check out my jazzy new tomato cages! Red, blue, yellow and green!

They are so fun! They add a little color while everything is small.

Hubby wasn't with me when I was shopping to tell me they are unnecessary. :)

His comment was, "Wouldn't the old rusty ones still work?"

Well, of course they will. Therefore I am using them to protect sunflower seedlings from the ravenous deer. 

But these cages make me happy everytime I look at them.

As does this adorable watering can flower pot filled with red gerbera daisies.  How cute is this?

I have it sitting in the frame of the bird bath that broke to give some color a bit higher up in the flower garden. Not necessary, not practical, but I smile every time I look at it!

I call the Potager "My happy place." And these little touches make it an even happier place. 

Garden Update

I love when the flowers of Spring begin showing off! The weeping cherry tree in our side yard is so lovely, you almost don't notice the neglected bed beneath it! We still have so much yard work to do!

Along the edge of the woods in the back are the daffodils that got pushed back there when the yard was being made into a lawn and forsythia branches that my husband just stuck into the ground with no roots, that have rooted and are now making a lovely backdrop for the daffodils.

The half dead Andromeda we brought back from the dump is blooming and doing well.

I've been buying left-over Easter plants on clearance and putting them in the flower garden.

It makes the pathway look so nice, and all of these plants are deer resistant so they will return year after year and multiply.

I took some time this weekend to thin out the raspberry bed. I had a wheelbarrow overflowing with clipped canes. It looks so much better now with space around each cane. Hopefully it will make for a healthier plant - and more raspberries!

I planted my potatoes in the flower bed, which is open, so I put this netting over the  trenches to keep out critters who may desire a potato breakfast. The netting is on a bit of an angle from the dirt piled to either side of the trenches and this has given me an idea of turning this bed into a cold frame this fall. Hubby says a cold frame needs to be near the house, but I think this will work fine. It is sited south facing and has a bit of protection from the Potager behind it. I need to work on plans to make that happen. 

In the Potager, there are more seedlings up. The snow peas and english peas popped up last weekend.

English Peas

Seedling photos are so unimpressive! The beets, pak choi, swiss chard and more radishes are also up, but I'll spare you for a few weeks until you can actually see something! It is still so thrilling though to walk through the garden and find a new plant coming up! I hope all of your gardens are also growing well!

A Spring Weekend of Gardening - Finally!

While it was lovely Easter weekend, I had activities planned every day that kept me out of the garden, so this weekend was my first weekend to get work done. I began spreading some mulch, and then moved onto weeding the asparagus bed and the garlic bed behind the Potager. Then I spent the remaining day weeding my flower garden. I was covered in dirt from my head to my toes, but the end result was worth it.

Ahh, that is better! The funny thing I find about planting perennials is when they start to come up, I don't always know what it is coming up! Some are old friends that I would recognize anywhere, some I know only because I know what was planted there last year. And then there those that baffle me for a while. This year there are about three plants I didn't recognize. One had a minty smell when I crushed one of the leaves. Binx solved that problem for me when he began rolling and laying on it. Cat Mint! I'd totally forgotten that I picked up a half dead Cat Mint plant at the end of the season sale at Lowes. I may need to put some type of barrier over it so it can grow a bit before my cat crushes it. He will crush it. But it's so much fun to watching him do that, that I'm okay with it.
Weeding the flower garden took me from 9:30 when I finished the Asparagus and Garlic weeding until 6:00 PM. I should have taken a before shot. It was a mess! It needs to be mulched badly, I only bought 5 bags of mulch. I spread two in the front left hand side of the Flower Garden and the rest went in two of the beds in the front of the gardens.

Mulch just makes everything look beautiful! Even when everything isn't up yet.
After church, a quick trip to the grocery store and lunch, I only had about three hours left to work in the Potager on Sunday afternoon. I turned over two beds, weeded a third, and then utter exhaustion set in.

There is a lot left to do, but I had to stop at that point. Although it still looks messy, it's an improvement. I did take a walk around to see what's coming up.

The spinach growing under the pea support is up. The peas are not.

Salad Rose radishes planting between the snow peas are up. The snow peas are not. 

Turnip

The turnips are up. As are the arugula. But no Pak Choi yet.

Arugula

And even though it will not last once the weather turns warm, I couldn't resist plopping a pot of Pansies in my great-grandfather's cement planter. I love pansies.

I saw one of those sayings that you can put on your wall and I bookmarked it for when I redo the Laundry Room. It says, "The most memorable days usually end with the dirtiest clothes." How true.

No peas this weekend

I look forward to Saint Patrick's Day as the beginning of direct sow gardening. I usually plant my peas, spinach, arugula and other cold loving vegetables.  The vegetables may love the cold, but it was bitterly cold this weekend. I had no desire to try and plant anything.

I don't know if you can see it, but that is frozen snow. Hard, icy and cold.  No accumulation, but Saturday's weather was horrid.  My youngest daughter and I checked out Bridal Shower sites for my older daughter's upcoming wedding and then drove up Route 35 to see how the Sandy recovery is going. (Not too well, sadly. There is just so much destruction.)
Sunday was bright and sunny, but bone chilling winds made it a "go out to lunch and browse the book store" kind of day, rather than a play in the dirt kind of day.
So I'm already behind.

Mother Nature, however, keeps perfect time. Gentle reminders that Spring will be here with it's warm plantable days.  And the peas, spinach and arugula will grow if planted one week later.

"Every year it seems to me I hear complaints about spring. 

 It is either "late" or "unusually cold," "abnormally dry"

 or "fantastically wet," 
for no one is ever willing to admit 

that there is no such thing as a normal spring."-  Thalassa Crusso

Philadelphia Flower Show 2013 - Brilliant!

I spent Friday at the Philadelphia Flower Show. The theme this year was Brilliant, and while I thought that would mean English Gardens, it was more a jewel type thing. Slightly disappointed, but the Flower Show is always informative and fun nevertheless.

There were the gates and the walk way with the huge birch trees and Big Ben - all impressive and very British, but I attend the Flower show for inspiration for my garden. I am not recreating scenes from London any time soon.

However there were some lovely plant combinations that were inspiring.  I did notice that they combine flowers that look lovely but could never be planted together, sun loving plants with shade loving plants, spring bloomers along with autumn bloomers. It like those flower garden designs you can get on-line - they are fabulous, but yours will never look like that. There were delphinium every where. I guess they are a British garden staple. I should try them again. The ones I planted last year did not do very well.

I find myself drawn to winding garden paths - I would like to try to make my perennial/herb garden path more intriguing.

I really loved these swimming fish garden sculptures - but at $80.00 a fish, they are never coming to swim amongst my flowers.

I was a bit disappointed that there was not one vegetable garden display. There were lettuces, cabbages and chard amongst the flowers, but no vegetable plots for me to drool over. It is, after all, a Flower Show.

I met my daughter for dinner and she said she was glad I wasn't wearing a silly hat like so many people she had seen while waiting for me. I guess hats are very British too. (And I am sorry for calling your hat silly if this is you....but it is, really.)
I did hear a few interesting lectures and really did thoroughly enjoy myself. And I did come away with some creative ideas that I hope incorporate into the Potager.
The Philadelphia Flower show was great fun - as always.

Let the yard work begin!

Took advantage of the warm weather Sunday to clean up the beds outside my Potager. Ah, it's good to have one job done. A million more to go!

Hello Again!

Hello Again....

My Dad has been nagging me to get back to writing on my blog. It has been a while. I apologize.

I can't remember why I stopped writing. I know I took photos between August and October.  I just never sat down to write.

Then Superstorm Sandy hit right at the time I should have been putting my garden to bed. We lost a few weekends cleaning up from that and the 12 inches of snow that followed a week later. ( I also lost all the frozen herbs and produce from my garden during the power failure after Sandy. Knowing what others lost,  this is nothing. I am blessed.)
My beautiful gray cat, Smokey, got sick and died.
Kids moved back home. We are still planning a wedding in the back yard.
The garden was just pushed to the back of my mind.

But here it is, March, and it is time to order seeds. I have spent the weekend going through my seeds and determining what will be planted this year and what needs to be ordered. What new plants will I try this year and which ones will go away as not successful in my Potager.  And which ones that were tried last year without success, will get one more chance to shine in the garden.  So much planning and replanning. I am looking forward to what actually comes to fruition in the Potager!

In the meantime, you may enjoy finding out what happens when a garden is totally ignored in the fall. I did remove the dead plants before Christmas but left a good deal behind apparently. I was a bit surprised to find there were plants growing on a chilly Sunday afternoon.

The raddichio that never turned red last year and never headed is up and heading nicely. It is finally red.

A red cabbage is growing where I never planted red cabbage. And hello - bugs are already eating it? It's barely above freezing here!

This sorry looking brussel sprout plant is producing new sprouts. (And the weeds are growing too!)

The shallots (left) and garlic (right) are coming up.



And the Red Russian and Siberian Kale are living up to their cold loving reputation. These would have done wonderfully if I had a cold frame. This is so on my list for the fall this year.

It's a bit of a mess, but I will get it back into shape. That's what I love about gardening.  Every spring there is a new chance to do it better.

"Gardening is something you learn by doing - and by making mistakes, like cooking, gardening is a constant process of experimentation, repeating the successes and throwing out the failures." - Carol Stocker, American gardening columnist.