What's Up in the Garden

I've been slacking on the sewing/knitting/general hand crafting as of late.  With the sun out and the warmer temps returning, the kids, Mr. Viever, and I are all outdoors!  So I thought you guys might want to see what we've been up to.

For my birthday back in April, Mr. Viever bought me several seed packets.  Well a few weeks later we hit up another nursery and I bought more seeds.  Seeds do us no good just sitting in their packets.  However, the area that is supposed to my raised garden bed... is still a dirt hole that needs sides, the soil amended, and a whole lot of rocks taken out.  So starting the seeds indoors it is!  I bought  Jiffy seed starter and set it up in our mudroom- sunny but no direct sunlight and nice and warm.

The open green house photo is my second set of seedlings started up two weekends ago.  Here we have (from left to right) one mixed greens starter, four onions (two bulbs and two green onion varieties), boo choy, empty row once holding the peas, and cucumbers.

I've pulled several of them out of the "greenhouse" and placed them on a plate to start the "hardening" process.  Again from the left,  salad greens, boo choy, peas, and a solitary cucumber plant.

I have another set of seeds on week 2 of their hardening processes which I wish I had started sooner like I had batch two as you can see these starters are a bit on the stringy side and the stalks are slow going to bulking up.  From the left, mixed salad greens, a row of mixed greens and carrots, carrots, and basil.

And last, but actually the first to go into the ground, plants I bought at Costco.  The interwebz told me that marigolds are one of those flowering plants that keeps pests like mosquitos away.  Another page told me that slugs don't like them... well the slugs around our house had a buffet while these guys were still in their plant containers.  Now that they are in the ground and I put wood chips (that Mr. Viever so kindly chipped up for me himself) around them, the slugs are leaving them alone!

The other plants I bought from Costco at the same time were my gerber daisies.  Why? Because they are my fav and add so much color!  

Best part?  I get to take my own cuttings and have them brighten up my kitchen.

Next time I update on the garden around here, hopefully we actually have plants in the ground.  I'll also need to take pictures of the compost that Mr. Viever built up and layered up.

Time to go get my hands dirty and go work on getting that garden bed ready!

--Viever