Plugging Along

12:30 am:

Well, I worked in the garden tonight and made some real progress. I'm probably halfway done with the cultivating, and the rest should be easier because it's just weeds, not wheat. Yes, wheat. Last year I used straw to cover the walkways in the garden to prevent weeds from growing. The problem is that there was still some seed attached to that straw, and I had wheatgrass-covered walkways in the garden last year. It didn't get real tall because I kept walking on it, and it didn't appear to be interfering with anything I was deliberately growing, so I left it alone. This spring, the remaining wheat sprouted and started to grow and it's already a couple of feet tall with almost mature seed heads. It really clings to the dirt, it's very hard to uproot. But I've gotten most of it out of there now and the weeds that are left have shallow roots and will be easy to pull out.

I got 4 tomato plants into the ground, duplicates of the ones I planted in the buckets to hang upside down. The 4 varieties are Bonny's Best (which produces a deep red, 1/2 pound fruit), Lemon Boy (deep yellow fruit), Pik Red (4 oz. fruits), and a Roma. I also put one of each variety into pint-sized cardboard ice cream containers so they'd have a little more root room and will last until Tammy can take them home and plant them. Yesterday I cut out one cell of each of the 4 varieties and then put those cells into an empty 4-cell seedling pot and took them to a woman I met in my Wednesday class (which finished, for me, last Wednesday); I'd offered my extras to my classmates and this woman said she'd appreciate them. So I'm done with tomatoes. For now. Got a couple of less-urgent seedlings that can wait until Saturday or Sunday.

I didn't do the watermelon, beans, or extra peppers tonight. I'm going to try to get them in tomorrow morning before it gets too warm to work comfortably. (I was half blind from sweat dripping onto my glasses and into my eyes tonight, I ended up having to push my glasses down on my nose and look over the top of them to make sure I'd done what I thought I'd done while peering through what felt like gallons of sweat. Yecch.) I did get some variegated deep orchid and white impatiens into the little half-barrel planter in the middle of the front of the house, on what used to be the front stoop, as I passed it on my trips from the garden to the seedlings or the water. And I'll do some more container planting tomorrow morning too, I can sit in the shade on my patio.

Then I'll have a shower and a quick lunch, catch Dudley, and head off to Mom's and, from there, off to my sis's for my brother's 50th birthday dinner.

I planted one pot of purple and white Alyssum for my mom when I did a hanging basket with the same combination for me. I'm not sure the spot where she wants it will get enough sun, though, so I'm going to plant another pot the same size with Impatiens and take them both to her tomorrow. I'll be able to check the amount of light that spot gets and put the appropriate pot there and find a good spot (either shadier or sunnier, depending) for the other one. I've also done one hanging basket with a smaller variety of white Verbena, and two with just white impatiens of a variety that likes a little more sun than most impatiens. I put the Verbena out front with the Alyssum basket, and the two white Impatiens on the hooks on the light pole in the back yard, one on the yard side of the fence and one on the pool enclosure side of the fence. (I'm planning on getting my pool up early next week, too.) I still have a couple more hanging baskets of Impatiens to do, both the sun-loving white and the shade-loving variegated, and I'll have a few left over for the patio shelf. I still have to pot the Begonias (to hang from the inside of the patio fence), and the red-and-white petunias and the rest of the Verbena in the raised bed.

Speaking of the raised bed, I've got a German Chamomile hedge in there now! From organic seeds I planted there last year that never grew. They were the first non-bulb plant to break ground this spring, and now I've got a very thick row of them along the front of the raised flower bed. They're dense, and they're loaded with flower buds, some just beginning to open. Go figure. Now I can't tell if the other green things in the raised bed are weeds, or more Lazarus stuff from last year's seeds that didn't grow. I think one of those 'weeds' might be the organic Tarragon I planted last year. I'll have to go look up pictures and compare, before I go pulling stuff out.