Keeping Up

Keeping up with the garden is really hard when you decide to go away for a week.  I am now behind in my planting.  I'm lucky that I have a few things that are growing all on their own, so I don't have to feel awful about not having any plants.

My Strawberry Bed
Shredded Paper Mulch

Today was a fairly productive day.  We had a lot of places that we needed to be, but on the way home from our last commitment of the day I stopped for some potting soil.  I need to plant some more lettuce and spinach in my special salad planter.

The empty lettuce planter sits.... lonely...

Well, as we were walking into the store (to buy potting soil, remember) I started to think about the party I'm throwing for my grandma.  She's turning 90, and I'm having a party for her next weekend.  If people are coming over to my house, I'd better make sure I have a pretty garden for them to enjoy, right?  It's almost like a graduation party!  So, I started buying flowers.  $76 worth of flowers.

My deck planters are going to be more functional this year.  I am planting an herb or veggie plant in almost every planter.  Here is one of my favorite planters, with a tomato growing:

The planters are all ready for plants!

My finished planter, complete with a tomato plant!

I also took a picture of my shade garden today.  I can't believe how huge it grew in just one year.  My hostas have all filled out, and are keeping the weeds down to a minimum.  It literally took me less than an hour to weed my garden this year!  I'll include both a before and after picture.

My shade garden in its infancy...

The same exact garden, this year!

I am also getting little fruits growing all around my yard.  The rhubarb is huge (and for sale!!), I have baby cherries on my tree, and a blossom on my blackberry plant.  My favorite, though?  The strawberries have baby strawberries!!! I will have berries by June, I am sure.  Mackenzie mulched with shredded paper, so the weeds are not even an issue right now.

Blackberry Blossom

Baby Cherries

Today we planted our deck planters, two hanging baskets, garlic, and five tomatoes.  We have a lot to do, still.  I hope we'll be able to get more done tomorrow morning... but the threat of rain makes me nervous!

I planted hanging baskets for my deck...
now if I could only remember to water them!

Last year, I made this cucumber trellis out of stuff I had around our house.
It works really well, and as soon as I relocate the strawberries to the left, I'm planting my cucs!

Blooming Madness

So, it was hot.  Really hot.  85 degrees in March hot.  Then, it got cold.  Frost cold.  It's not good for blossoming trees and plants.  But, we lucked out!  We have some baby cherries!  Mackenzie was the first to spot them.  The cherry tree has only a few on it.  I wonder if it is because it froze when the tree was in full blossom...

We started a few new projects today.  The first was to get the strawberries in a "happy place."  This means, we want to just pick and eat strawberries.  We don't want to do lots of work, weed, or worry about rotten berries.  We just want to eat them!  Some of them, we might want to dip into chocolate (thanks for some great ideas, Pinterest!).  But, we don't want them to be a lot of work.  Something I've read about strawberries is that they don't like touching the dirt.  They rot faster, according to the books.  So, Mackenzie spent a couple of hours today mulching our berries.  This year, we used shredded paper, soaked in water for a while.

We have loads of blossoms, and some little berries, too!  It's going to be fun to see what we get this year.  We've also been selling our berries! I'm so excited to say that we've made $110 from berry sales, and we've almost outfitted Mackenzie for the upcoming hockey season.

Out other project that we're working on is taking care of a planter around a big pine tree in our yard.  This tree has a cinder block ring around it with hostas and lilies.  It was very difficult to weed around, and the lilies were choking most other plants out.  So, we decided to use the cinder blocks in another place, and clean up the bed.  I think we're just going to mow there, now.

If you check out earlier posts in my blog, you'll see some pictures of our shade garden project.  There is a picture right after we brought in the black dirt.  We hadn't even planted anything yet.  I thought I'd share an "after" picture that I took today.  Tim even stopped and commented that he thought it looked pretty good.

I'll leave you with some pictures of our beautiful blossoms that we're enjoying.  The irises are in full blossom, and we have Clematis blooms!