I’ve been too busy gardening to have much blogging time this past two days. I bought a lot of herbs and flowers to transplant yesterday and then bought some marigold to transplant today. I hope I have things enough under control next spring to grow from seed instead. But I wanted to see some instant color this year.
I have the bed by the pump house completely planted now. It contains three kinds of thyme, garlic chives, borage seeds, an Easter lily, the alyssum my neighbor gave me for Mother’s Day, some coleus I bought yesterday, a lemon scented geranium, two marguerites, gazanias transplanted from Mom’s, amaryllis in back against the wall, German chamomile and also the ground cover variety, and two kinds of parsley. There may be a thing or two I’ve forgotten. I did find my camera, but haven’t had time to upload the pictures to the computer yet. Business before pleasure!
In the bed I see from my kitchen window I have two kinds of yarrow, some marigolds, some coreopsis, some cat mint, some French sorrel and some seeds for Blanket Flower, borage, and a border plant I can’t remember right now. (See bottom picture, above.) When planting, one can only imagine what the finished picture will be and one has to keep that picture in mind when the bed is nothing but transplants and seeds. As Paul said, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. One has to have a certain amount of faith when planting a garden or one wouldn’t bother. I may or may not actually see what I now envision. I may have simply planted a feast for the gophers. One can’t make gopher cages for everything.
I also completed half the bed beside the driveway today. This is the bed where I divided the artichoke a few weeks ago. One is in the pot to protect it from the gophers. The others have to fend for themselves in the ground. I pulled a few weeds, planted one hill of light green zucchini in a cage and one hill of golden zucchini without one. I put in a marigold for good measure and planted a couple of borage seeds. I still have a tall red chard going to seed there. It looks nice in contrast, and I am looking forward to some chard there in the fall. I still have the part of the bed nearest the house to finish weeding and clearing things from. My husband got halfway through making the last raised bed there, and the frame is on its side against the shed behind the bed with the wire along side. It looks terrible, since it’s also very weedy, but first the plants had to go into the ground before the rain expected tomorrow. I like to transplant, and plant seeds, before rain is expected.
Last project today was to finish planting what I could in the fenced garden before the rain comes. I managed to plant a few green ice lettuce seeds, a few more French Breakfast radishes, some borage, and a few sunflowers (all seeds). My first pot of zucchini came up a couple of days ago, two cucumber hills are up, one of the old basil seeds (out of about twelve I planted) came up, and the tomatoes are making progress. I’m still worried about the bell peppers and basil transplants. Their leaves are yellow at the edges and they look unhappy. Can’t tell if they have too much food and water or not enough. I’m sure they have enough water. And the nutrients I put in the soil before planting were not chemicals. (See raised bed in top picture, above. Peppers are in foreground, with radishes around them. Tomatoes are in background with a couple of tiny basil in back, between them.) Yesterday I transplanted a borage (a volunteer which came up in a pot with a tomato). I felt the pot could not support them both, and if one had to die, I chose the borage. But I hope it will decide to be happy even though relocated. I added a marigold to each raised bed where I’ve planted tomatoes because they are supposed to be friends.
I would like to have done more, but I ran out of time today. Seems it goes so quickly in the garden. If the predicted rain actually comes, I may not get back to gardening until Tuesday. That will be good for the bookseller part of me that needs more time to get ready to exhibit at a home school convention in Fresno on June 9-10. When I get back from that, maybe I’ll finally get some pictures attached to these blogs.
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