Gardening

A couple of weeks ago I started planting my garden.  It seems that every year I greatly decrease the amount I plant, and this year is no different.  I planted onions, Brussels sprouts, green peppers, and tomatoes.  I have a row of onions, a row of Brussels sprouts, but instead of planting a long row of peppers and a long row of tomatoes, I planted them in short rows.  The reason for this is that Art currently has several trucks and other pieces of equipment parked over my second garden where I had planned on planting my pumpkins.  He was not excited to move them, so I am going to try and plant them on the empty half of the first garden.  Art suggested I plant them on the compost pile, but because I am lazy, I didn't want to have to walk all the way down there with buckets of water to water the plants, when I could easily walk across the driveway.  Like I said, I'm lazy.

Last year's weed-control was such a success that I decided to do it again this year.  Art gave me four old hay bales and I spent a couple of hours on Sunday laying it down.  Most of the onions are coming up (far right) and a few Brussels sprouts seedlings are poking through (though not many, so I may have to replant them.).  I tried not to cover up the sprouts, but because there are so few coming up and because I find it impossible to plant in a straight line, I left a wide swath- just in case.  I covered the entire garden, even the back section where the pumpkins will go because I don't know if you know, but weeding between pumpkin vines is a b*tch, so I"m trying to save myself the anguish.

It's not the prettiest garden but it'll more or less weed-free- which means there is less chance of me mowing something over come August, merely because I'm tired of weeding them.  That's how, last year,  I lost 1/4 of my strawberry patch (even though it didn't make a difference, I still had strawberries out my butt), 1/2 my bean plants, and most of my tomato plants.  Let's just hope I actually get some tomatoes this year (I bought the really tall tomato cages this year, so here's hoping!).  It's been really dry here, but amazingly enough I have been watering my garden every couple of days. I say 'amazingly' because it's a 'survival of the fittest' attitude around here. I have high hopes for myself that I will be able to maintain this amount of dedication, but I'm not holding my breath.