Garden: Before & after

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:

Grass-grown plot

Digging up the grass was rather backbreaking. I was sore afterward!

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!

My cute little seedlings

Seedlings successfully placed into the ground

Mulch!

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. 

 

Everything is flourishing except the basil and the zucchini, which the slugs keep eating

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.

1. Zucchini plant that got almost completely eaten and is coming back.
2. Zucchini plant that came from the nursery