Saturday, June 21, 2008

No One There To Tell Us What To Do

So, it's time to plant the garden - last year we did a few smaller varieties of tomatoes, a few pepper plants, some herbs, etc. We were going to plant a little more this year, but were waiting until we got done with our wedding / honeymoon to start. - The wife got a little carried away this year - she was on the road for work the other day, and when she came home she said "I found farmer's market that had all their plants on sale, so I got us some, but we'll need some more pots and potting soil". After we ate dinner we drove to Wal-Mart and went to the garden section, and I said "Okay, what do we need?" She said, "Um, twenty-one more pots. And at least six bags of potting soil".

So we bought twenty-one more pots:




...and 240 lbs. of potting soil:



...and it still wasn't enough. I drilled some holes in the bottom of some spare 5-gallon buckets for some of the tomato plants:



...and we still had to go back to the store for one more pot and another 120 lbs. of potting soil. So far we have:

- 4 grape tomatoes
- 4 cherry tomatoes
- 4 roma tomatoes
- 12 beefsteak tomatoes
- 8 yellow bell peppers
- 4 chili peppers
- 1 tabasco pepper
- 1 serrano pepper
- 2 thyme
- 3 sage
- 3 oregano
- 5 cilantro
- a rectangular planter of green onions
- a metric assload of basil (probably 10 - 15 plants in one big pot)
...and one cactus.


We also had some spinach, but it was left out while we were on vacation and the temperatures were 90+ every day and it got all gnarly (spinach doesn't like heat). My mom is also growing a row in her garden for me - jalapeƱos, cayenne, squash, & zucchini.

Who says you can't have a garden if you live in a condo?



(This is just were we put them after we got all the plants in the pots - I picked up some planking & brackets at the hardware store today, and will be building some shelves to organize things).

Here's some shots of the front porch:



Most of the herbs are on the plant racks - there's a stray bell pepper plant there 'cause we were running out of room on the back patio.



Green onions are in the rectangular planter at the front of the porch - we tend to pick one or two every couple of days when we make dinner, so they never get that big. A few more pepper plants have migrated up there until I can build some shelves or get some racks for the back patio. The big black mutt is ever vigilant in guarding the plants. I also picked up some spray paint at the hardware store to refinish those chairs & the garden lights - along with an oil change on the bike, I guess my weekend is booked...