Yesterday I decided to take pictures of the plants growing in the new raised garden bed. I was thinking it would be interesting to document them so I can see the difference a few months down the road. So here's the location of the bed. It's situated in the sunniest corner of our garden. And here's what it looks like. We planted herbs on the left side and the seeds on the right side. We relocated the lemon thyme from its pot to the bed and David remarked that the leaves seem to be so much bigger than before. Granted, it was in a pretty small pot before so that's probably why. Our parsley is also here and it's just been thriving here. I think we need to use some of the leaves so it won't get too leggy. And this is our cilantro. Same story as the parsley -- need to use so it won't get too leggy and unwieldy. We were growing our pot of basil next to a sunny window but we noticed that the stems and leaves were turning yellow no matter how much we watered. So we decided to move it out of the house and into the garden bed. We realized that there were actually 5 separate plants in that pot! After reading some gardening forums, I realized that it was turning yellow because it was lacking nutrients. So the relocation was perfect and we now see green leaves emerging from the plants. :) Hopefully all five plants will grow nice and bushy for us. Then we have the alliums. The farthest back is a red onion we planted. We also planted 3 garlic bulbs (I plan on planting more when we buy some Gilroy garlic from the farmer's market). So far they are growing well and we've read they are good pest deterrents so we're excited to have them in the bed. Here's the red onion up close. Then there is the seed part of the bed. I planted some mesclun lettuce seeds and seedlings have emerged already after just a few days! They look like butterflies on the soil, ready for lift-off. We grew them last year, too, and honestly we didn't really get a good harvest. I'm hoping this year would be better. :) This year I decided to plant mini lettuce heads. I was hoping to find mini romaine lettuce seeds but didn't see them for sale anywhere. So we bought the mini butter lettuce seeds and here are the cute seedlings. I foresee a lot of healthy salads this summer. :) I also planted some cosmos seeds. I'm crossing my fingers that we'll get flowers to cut this year. Here is a seedling. This isn't in the garden bed but I'd be amiss if I didn't mention our mint. We had a pot of mint last year and it was completely root bound. So we removed it from the pot, cut away a lot of the roots and repotted them in two separate pots. We didn't plant mint in the garden bed because it'll basically become a mafia boss and take over the whole thing, squishing out all the other plants. After all that planting and repotting our hands and tools were wonderfully worn. The rest of the post isn't about the garden bed but just some updates on our other plants. The hydrangea is putting forth flowers! And has grown super healthy and bushy! Our freesia has flowered! And it smells soooo good. I'm hoping these guys propagate and we can have more freesia bulbs going next year. :) And that's it. :) All in all, I think getting the bed really good soil made all the difference. I feel more confident than I ever felt before for having a great harvest this year. :)
1 Comment
David
4/3/2013 02:57:19 am
Yay! So far so good. No snails, aphids, or any unwelcome guests.
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