Better Late Than Never

Here we are, near the end of May, and I'm finally pulling my garden together.

 . . . But Just Getting Started

Yeah, getting the raised beds built are something that's gonna pay off for the next few years, but it also means it's gonna be another low yield garden year. I got the beds built back at the end of April, but the 50 bags of soil I put in them barely covered the bottoms. When I had 4 cubic yards delivered, much of what was delivered was mud, so I had to wait for that to dry out, break up what I could, then rake out the biggest chunks of dried mud-rocks.  Last weekend I put up the chicken wire fence to try to keep Bingo out (so far, not as successful as I'd hoped.) 

 

 

Plenty of Tomatoes For All

I raised tomato plants from seeds this year. They seemed to stall out size-wise a few weeks ago, but look pretty healthy.  Only thing is that I didn't exactly count them before I went out to plant them. As I started plugging them in the ground, I just kept finding more to still put in. I decided to fill up one entire bed with them - Mike counted 47 plants in there.

 

Because they aren't as big as the plants you get at the garden center, I'm not sure how well they'll hold up, but with the soaker hoses and mulch I'm hopeful that maybe, just maybe, I'll have more tomatoes than I can eat on my own for a change. That wasn't the case with the 8 or 9 plants I had last year.

 

Soaker Hoses a Plus 

I'm also hopeful that these soaker hoses will be helpful later this summer when I don't want to get out there in the morning to water. We ran a garden hose around the fence, coming in at the middle of the two garden beds to feed the soakers and undo to spray them - all also to try to keep Bingo from eating the hose.

 

More Than Just 'Maters

The other bed has more of a mix of produce - multicolored peppers raised from seeds, some of Grandpa Herman's onions, some more onion seeds, multicolored carrots, cucumbers and cantaloupe.  I've got a little gap left in there between the cucumbers and melons - I'll put pick up some plants in the next week or so to cover us in case the seeds aren't good to us.