Cleaning!

We had the guy building our deck bring a gardener to take care of sweeping, raking , and trimming. There was millions of leaves, twigs, and etc. that needed to be gathered and bagged. He did an amazing job. I feel like the garden will be more enjoyable this year because of the clean fresh start. It's never looked so good. 

After he had finished the days work, I went outside to plant the two spinach plants. They are cool weather plants and had started to shrivel a bit from lack of space. I planted them and enjoyed the new cleaned and organized backyard. I watered everything else and headed inside proud of Potogar Patch! 

The gardener clean the strawberry bed area as well. Trimmed all of the ivy back so that it wouldn't strangle the plants. Amazing. I couldn't have done it alone, but from hear on out I'll be keeping it up. Happy for it to be my job! 

Clean Potagar Patch.

Cleaned and trimmed strawberry patch. 

New implanted spinach plants. 

Lettuce Plant!

I got up and waited to see if the overcast day would turn into a nice one so that I could pull my seedlings out into the sun. They haven't seen the sun in 3 damn days. (Does anyone know that reference?) Around noon, I went to the sunroom opened the door and it was warm! 

I started pulling the plants out then decided to fill the deep mid-box and the far upper left corner box with what soil we did have. I didn't think the runoff would be so bad but soil and compost are two very different things. I could barely fill those 2 boxes with the 3 very large bags of soil I bought but I accomplished it with some leftover organic soil and veteran compost. 

Then I did the most exciting thing; I planted the radish seeds, I'd soaked, and the lettuce seedlings! They are both cool weather plants so I trusted that considering the weather I'd be okay. After planting I needed to water. Well it turns out the shower cap on the hose was broken. I didn't know this until after it soaked me. I quickly ran I turn off the hose and remove the cap. I had to bend the hose to get past the seedlings (unplanted sunbathing lot) without drowning them, then let it loose and watered. I decided because it was only noon and pretty warm that the seedlings would need a little drink. I sprayed the cardboard pots. That should do the trick since they haven't gotten sun in awhile. 

Finally, I raked up some leaves and ran inside a pure wet mess. 

Before planting.

Planted. The square behind the lettuce plants has the radish seeds tucked away asleep but hopefully waking under the soil. 

Potagar Patch 2014

I know it's been a long winter and everyone has been getting sick of waiting to put their gardens together but it looks like the wait is coming to an end, hopefully! 

This year we'll be combining Potagar Schoultz with Patch Market. The new garden name is going to be Potagar Market. Exciting! The reason I did it this way was because I decided it was best to only grow the things we truly ended up eating and the things, out of the ones we ate that, worked. 

That came down to strawberries (they didn't really work but most of that was due to the excessive rain), cucumbers, spinach, basil, lemon balm, tomatoes (many different varieties especially our beloved yellow), peppers, and lettuce. I'm forgetting a couple of things but that is the bulk of the garden. Patch Market has officially been turned into a strawberry patch. It seemed fitting and much more conducive to growing the berries than anywhere else. I was not about to make the same mistake and squash all of my beauties, Ozark and Loran, into that ridiculous Topsy Turvy. The Ozark variety does need more space but that did not come into account when making the decision. It came down to- we love strawberries and the darn TT didn't work- what works best. People have strawberry patches so using the recycled material bed as a strawberry patch just made sense. 

We will be growing in all 6 raised beds, the recycling bin, 2 large rounds, and the brick bed. Fruiting will happen a few weeks later because I've yet to plant a thing. This time last year I had everything planted, most of all, planned and organized. I planted the last few plants on my birthday last year, April 18, including the tomatoes. So even though the start is late we should get a good crop. The summer has promised to be long and I hope that promise is kept. 

Planning and buying have commenced. 

We have a great new deck so the garden is even more welcome (not that it wasn't last year) in the sense that we can sit on the deck take in the sun, relax, and not worrying that we made a mistake in taking up the entire backyard with a veggie garden.