The first weekend after I moved, I planted a garden in a lovely little 5' x 8' garden plot that a previous tenant must have created. It was grown over with grass and I had to dig it up by hand. I was pleased to find that I actually had rather nice soil, very loose and dark, with very few stones and a ton of earthworms. I added a bag of compost, a bag of "sheep & peat," and two bags of topsoil.
Then I planted some plants that I had bought from a local man and his wife who raised them in their greenhouse. They were the most beautiful little seedlings you could find.
I planted...
- Roma Tomatoes
- Amish Slicer (large tomatoes)
- Sweet Million (cherry tomatoes)
- Zucchini
- Lemon cucumber
- Burpee cucumber
I also bought a couple of herbs from Home Depot and put them in their own individual little pots: Basil, Parsley, Rosemary, and Peppermint.
Before:
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| Grass-grown plot |
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| Digging up the grass was rather backbreaking. I was sore afterward! |
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Nice smooth level dirt, ready for plants.
I prepared it before I went to bed and then a heavy rain came overnight and drenched it. Brilliant! |
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| My cute little seedlings |
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| Seedlings successfully placed into the ground |
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| Mulch! |
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| I added a border of some landscaping stone I got at a yard sale, and planted some herb seeds in the section near the fence. |
After:
All the work I did at the beginning has paid off. About a month later, my tomatoes are already higher than their cages and I haven't had to pull a single weed.
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| Everything is flourishing except the basil and the zucchini, which the slugs keep eating |
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| Cherry tomatoes will be ripe soon |
A story about the zucchini: My poor little zucchini got eaten immediately by slugs. They ate all the leaves except for half of one leaf, and I thought it was surely going to die. I went to a local nursery and bought another zucchini plant and planted it next to the one that had received such a setback in its tender young life, and I expected it would die right away.
Except - the one from the nursery is now the one that looks like it is going to die, and the original one has sprouted a whole new set of leaves! I don't know how this happened, but it certainly makes me want to get my plants from the same people next year who grew such a robust zucchini plant.
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1. Zucchini plant that got almost completely eaten and is coming back.
2. Zucchini plant that came from the nursery |
