Spinach in a bowl and...is that corn shooting up?

Yum! Look at this beautiful spinach: from my garden!



Ate it in my salad last night!



Had some left over that I ate today!



Rode my bike today - then went for a walk this evening. Wandered over to the park to check on my gardens. OK - is this corn shooting up (from the seeds I planted yesterday??!!) It's right where a seed would be...



Is it? Is it?



I'm so excited...who knows: maybe it will be 'knee high by the fourth of July'...

Planted!

The garden plots are all planted and ready to go!

It has been so much work to get it all going!

This past Thursday had me 3+ hours at the park; the city dropped leaf humus for us and we distributed to all the plots (56! [ok; almost all of them]); it was back-breaking work; filling those wheel barrows and then dumping or shoveling out: over and over - plus I had done a little planting in my one prepared plot. Look how pretty after the humus:



and look how dirty my socks got! I was wearing shoes the whole time folks!



Yesterday I went to this great garden center: Canterbury Creek Gardens - I love the owner; he knows everything there is to know about gardening and plants (did I mention he's all organic?) and he's so helpful!

Looking at his starter plants I realized that my little plants would never make it (and I learned why...that lesson is for another day [see me next year when I try and start from seed again!]) so needless to say I just crumbled up what I had and added it to my plots today.

So in one plot I planted three zucchini, three cucumbers, one area about 4x4 of corn and a 4x4 plot of green beans:



In the other I have the spinach (from before; I thinned it out and will be eating that in my salad here in a little bit! hooray: so pretty!), about a 2x2 area of onions (planted Thursday), 9 tomato plants (3 varieties), 9 pepper plants (3 varieties), basil, thyme and cilantro (2 cilantro plants!):



I don't know that I'm satisfied with what I did. I kind of wish I had done fewer of this or that and maybe tried another one or two of something else...we'll see. I'm still pretty much a novice and learning all the time so I think mostly I need to be patient; see how these plants do and move on with that knowledge next year. I really: really, really hope the corn grows! I love fresh corn - I don't even cook it (ok sometimes I microwave it for a few minutes so my vegan Earth Balance "buttery spread" will melt on it! But I have many, many times just eaten it raw right off the cobb! Love it!

I certainly need to learn how to can tomatoes. I don't even like tomatoes! I like them all smooshed up in salsa and soup and that's it! I make a ton of soup so that was my big thought: grow tomatoes like crazy so I have them to can so I can skip buying them (at least sometimes) this winter at $3/can for the organic Whole Foods brand tomatoes; here's to hoping I learn!

Needless to say: the hardest part is over. Thank god for the kneeling pad-thing my friend Marla bought me last year: it has been a godsend already!

And it has been so nice meeting folks and hearing tips and just being out in the dirt and mud and goodness of it all! I hope to put up a little fencing soon...just couldn't find what I wanted yesterday or today...

Garden Stuff

Ugh - two 10 x 10 plots can actually be a bit to get started/get going.
I have one plot that is beautiful:



(I had planted spinach in it and now the spinach looks like spinach: hooray!):



and one plot that incessantly mocks me with grass and weeds. I work at it; week after week but there is so much mud still and you can't pull and toss weeds and grass with all the mud or you lose a ton of soil! Last week I resorted to pulling up weeds and grass and laying it back in the plot to hopefully "dry out" so I can knock the dirt off and keep it in my plot: seriously; there is that much and it's still raining just about every day.



Then there's this: bought a grow lamp (what am I: a 20 year old pot grower? totally felt like that at Home Depot last weekend - ha!) for my poor baby starter plants. Every time I take them outside to try and "harden them" they take days to recover. I had them all set up under the lamp Sat



and my little cat Phoenix stretched all the way out from the table to the step ladder I had them set up on (2 more cm and this never would have happened; so much for thinking I had spaced it out enough!) and she ate the tops of three of my bell pepper plants: I was ready to kill her. I have been working so hard on keeping these starter plants alive and well and she munched 3 of the 12 healthiest: UGH (no pictures of that carnage yet).

Anyway - even with these set backs and irritations: hooray for gardens and outside and actually listening to the wind (which I did Sat; all alone in the park, surrounded by gardens and goodness - it was lovely) and sun and plants (and even little cats that eat the tops of plants!).

Quote for Today

"It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get back up."
Vince Lombardi