I am just so excited to have my garden back!  Yesterday as I measured out my squares and carefully planted my seeds, it was like a reunion with an old friend.  I really love square foot gardening,  and trying to do without it last year was more than enough trying for me.  Never again.

I have four main garden beds, three of them measure 10 x4 and the fourth one is a few inches shy, so it’s more like a 9×4.  Total,  that is 156 square feet of growing space, and boy, did I plant a lot!

I have 21 tomato plants, 27 hot pepper plants- including one habanero plant, 7 sweet pepper plants and scads and scads of other edibles.  I planted tons of new-to- me greens, like claytonia, mache, mizuna, cress, two kinds of endive, and many different kinds of  lettuce and spinach.   There are 13 square feet of assorted carrots, kale, broccoli, chard, lots of radishes and 5 varieties of beet- some prized for their greens, some for the root.  I planted six square feet of pole beans, and then six square feet of bush beans, PLUS the 9 square feet that are half bush beans, half cucumbers.  The six varieties of cucumber will be trained up a trellis, and I’m hopeful that I’ll have enough picklers to make pickles this year.  We even plopped in a watermelon and a cantaloupe plant.  Not sure how those will do, but the kids wanted to try them out.

I made the decision that for this year at least, the herbs and onions will not go in the raised beds.  Rabbits pretty much leave herbs and onions alone, so tomorrow I will spend time cultivating the herb bed and planting what I have ready in there.  My basil, marjoram, thyme and chervil are all doing really well, and will be so happy in the ground.

It was so wonderful today to walk out to the garden and see that my pepper and tomato plants survived yesterday’s crazy wind all right.  Today I am a bit on the sore side from yesterday’s efforts, but I certainly feel that all is right with the world now.  The garden grows, and we eagerly await a harvest.

For the record, these are the tomato and pepper plants I have growing.  Most of these tomatoes are new varieties to me- I’m excited to try them!

Tomatoes 2011:

• Tigerella
• German Johnson
• Roma
• Moskovich
• Lemon Drop (two of these)
• Woodle Orange (this one is rather pathetic looking…we’ll see)
• Purple Calabash
• Cherokee Purple
• Striped German
• Black Cherry
• Yellow Brandywine
• Green Zebra
• Pruden’s Purple
• Aunt Ruby’s German Green
• Valiant
• Purple Russian
• Pineapple
• Sweet 100
• Black Krim
• Ananas Noire (also rather sickly, but worth a shot)

Hot Peppers 2011:

• Serrano
• Cascabella
• Bulgarian Carrot
• Maule’s Red Hot
• Joe’s Round
• Hinkelhatz
• Georgia Flame
• Aji Cristal
• Habanero
• Jalapeno