What I did the weekend of 5/12/2012

Alright, my bad.  I've been so busy gardening that actually posting took a bit of a back seat!  May is easily the busiest month for gardening, but keep faith; once you get all your veggies in the garden all you have to do is maintenance for the rest of the summer.  Just work hard now and remember the payoff.

So what did I do the weekend of May12th?  A lot.  I dug out the front area for the first row of sunflowers, which was far harder than it needed to be because I never got around to killing the grass first.  Whoops, lesson learned.  So lots of digging off the top layer of grass and then shoveling and breaking up the clods of dirt to aerate and till the soil.  I had started to put the sod in my yard waste recycling bin but realized they'd be far more useful in my compost bin, so that's where they ended up. 

In the backyard raised bed garden I planted four tomato varieties: Fourth of July (early variety that I got from Burpee), and three randoms that I just picked up from Home Depot.  I also planted my black beauty eggplant from Burpee, and five peppers.  The peppers I mixed up as seedlings so they are a mix of sweet and mildly hot, all from Burpee and all from seeds so I'm excited to see how those do compared against my tomatoes that I bought as plants.  I also tilled and planted broccoli, beans and peas, all from seeds.  The broccoli seeds I used were from last year, so I planted way more than they recommended (twice to three times as many) and thank goodness because only four sprouted.  The peas and beans are sprouting pretty heavily and looking good so far.  So either peas and beans are way easier to grow or the "don't use old seeds" advice I hear from everyone is true.

I also took on some more container gardening and got in one of each type of pepper (but don't know which is which) in some pepper grow bags and a fairy tale eggplant that I got as a plant from Burpee.  I'll post more on these in a Container Gardening Part 2 post.

Both eggplants were looking rather run down by the time I got them in the ground but with some watering and rain they both bounced back well so here's hoping they flourish.

The picture upload isn't working right, but I don't have time to fiddle with it and want to get some posts out before I leave for vacation, so I can't caption but below are: 1. beans, they sprouted up pretty quickly  2.  bed with broccoli and peas  3. five peppers and a black beauty eggplant  4. my fairy tale container eggplant. 

Fairy Tale Eggplant