I have some progress to report as I’ve finally been able to plant the two established beds fully. About a month ago or so I planted the peas, lettuce and some herbs, as well as the chard and beets, but the rest needed to wait for warmer temperatures. Then yesterday I was giving my tomato plants a little loving when I noticed that two of them had blossoms. Uh-oh, they need to be in the ground. So I mustered up all the energy I could and went to work. Here to the left you see the finished results of the first bed. On the end closest to us you can see my bamboo pole bean trellis, followed by the snap pea trellis. Then the whole garden was boxed in and fenced with green garden fencing. Now there’s some great stuff! It’s much nicer to use than it’s metal counterpart-chicken wire. It doesn’t leave wires poking around and it’s really easy to maneuver with a scissors and a staple gun.

The bulk of my tomato plants went into the second bed pictured here to the right. That bed already had chard, beets, kohlrabi, and okra in it, but the back half by the wall was a blank canvas. The tomato plants are along the wall, although I still need to come up with something for them to grow on. In front of the trellis I planted my two varieties of slicing cucumbers as well as the Chinese Long Beans. I’m very curious to see if the long beans produce. I’ve never had them, but they look really cool- like giant green beans that are three feet long. This garden still needs its fencing around it, but I ran out of steam yesterday and didn’t feel like playing with the power tools.

So far the gardens are looking good. My fennel hasn’t come up yet, so I’m debating just using that square foot for more carrots or something, as it’s been a while. My eggplants aren’t looking so hot, but they like hot weather, so I imagine that as it warms up they’ll begin perking up and thriving. One that is surprising me is the Asian green Tatsoi. It’s like a baby bok choy and it’s growing beautifully! I think I’m going to have to plant some more in the third bed once I get that one going. The third bed will get rolling shortly, that one is going on the other side of the shed, so essentially, my gardens wrap around the shed. That bed will have more pole beans and also my patty pan squash plant in it as well as more greens, lettuces and carrots.

I also ran out of potting mix yesterday or I would have gotten the pot menagerie finished as well. This year my hot peppers and tomatillos are going in pots, as well as an early pot each of spinach and radishes. The radishes we’ve been enjoying, and we’ll nibble at the spinach later this week I think. We had a plant die out last year in our backyard landscaping, and since the patch around the plants is nicely covered in gravel, that’s where my pots are going this year. It works beautifully, and looks nice too. The tomatillos I plan to move around the yard as needed, because as I understand they are a big attractor for the pollinators, which could be good or bad, depending on how you look at it.

So far, so good. It’s so exciting to see everything growing in the gardens, I love it. As early as this weekend we could start nibbling on some of the baby lettuces, and of course, that spinach that is ready to go. It seems like we’ve had to wait so long for the gardening to really get going, but now that it is, life is grand again.