Garden Fazool, May 2011

I am really excited about gardening and composting this year and wanted to share what I've been up to.

I have always wanted to do more in the way of vegetable gardening, but didn't have a real yard until last spring.  This is only our second spring in the suburbs with access to a small front yard (very sunny but heavily planted already) and a back yard (shady for the most part, with a column of sun along our shed and fence), so it is very exciting.  Last year we just did flowers (sunflowers along the road which looked amazing, some cosmos and some nasturtium in the front) bulbs (hyacinth) and a few herbs (but there was that basil blight, so I didn't even get very much basil!).  We mostly focused on the examining the riches that had been left by the past owners: a huge lavender bush, a huge rosemary bush, surprise herbs around the property (like the lovage that reseeded, thanks to Stacey for identifying it!) tulips, primroses, many other flowers and shrubs, and a VERY prolific fig tree!!

This year, I am taking on vegetable gardening with fervor.  I started both tomatoes and basil from seed indoors on 4/18/11.

Here are my babies at five days old (organic sweet tomatoes and organic sweet basil):

And here they are on Mother's Day:

And, of course, I need somewhere to plant these guys!  AND I need somewhere to plant my new heirloom seeds from Baker Creek!

That's striped zucchini (still don't know where that's going to be planted...), Giant of Italy parsley, Rainbow Swiss Chard, Slo-Bolt Cilantro and free carrots.

For Mother's Day, my hubby dug me up a 3x5 foot garden near our shed (gets partial shade in the afternoon).  I got to play mason! It was really fun. Here are the garden pics:

 First layer of bricks put in below grade.

Second layer of bricks were put in partly below grade. Wha-La! Garden completed. 

And it looks really cute, too.

Here's the plan I designed for this garden, since it is partly shady:

SW=Swiss Chard, P=Parsley, B=Basil, CT=Carrot, C=Cilantro

This garden is now planted! See my next post The Rainbow Garden.  

Stick around for garden updates throughout the spring and summer, it's gonna be exciting!