Little Plantlings

11 May 2012: The entrance to Christopher's Gardens.

Two weeks ago today we finished building and setting up our 4 new raised garden beds, including stuffing them full of mulch-enriched topsoil.  As soon as they were done, we headed straight to our favorite local nursery, Christopher's Gardens, to select some starter plants and get the beginnings of this year's garden planted.

Chris and Dylan help Ed load our new plants into the back of the car.

It was getting toward dusk by this time, so the plants sat on the kitchen counter overnight to await transplantation the next day.  Meanwhile, Ed asked me to do some research on which plants need direct sun, which do well in partial shade, and which plants do or do not do well planted together, and then design a plan for our new garden.  It took me 3 hours on the computer that evening, but this is what I came up with:

Ed actually followed the plan fairly closely, although some of it had to be modified.  For instance, our 18 strawberry plants took up much more room than I'd anticipated, so we were only able to fit 3 of the tomato plants on the end of that bed.  Eventually I will revise this plan to reflect how our garden actually turned out.  Then we'll use this year's results to determine what worked and what didn't, and apply that information to designing our next garden.

The strawberry bed, with 3 tomato plants in Walls of Water at the end.

3 different varieties of lettuce were planted in the nearest bed.

Spinach seeds were planted in a row beside the lettuce.

In the next bed beyond it, Ed planted cauliflower and radish seeds;

to the right of those are broccoli plants.

In the furthest bed you can see more tomatoes and some chili peppers.

Ed plants some cabbages for me (he hates cabbage).

The lumpy rows to the left are where he planted potatoes.

Originally, we decided not to plant onions this year because

we still have almost half a row of onions left from last year. 

However, we ended up buying sets of red onions, which we haven't planted yet.

These old onions never got very big; they were more like large green onions.

During my research, I learned we should have thinned them to give them more room to grow!

At the end of the day, Ed waters down his new little plantlings!

Our 6 new cabbage plants.

Three days later, we were back at Christopher's Gardens for more starter plants.  Everything was going so well, we were excited to fill every space!

Cherry tomato plant to the left, regular tomato plant on the right.

Beyond them are the chili peppers.

The 6 chili peppers are on the left, and we added 3 bell peppers on the right.

Ed hadn't planned on bell peppers, but I requested them.

We also added 6 tiny little cucumber plants.

The 6 broccoli plants.

Next: What's coming up!