Garden Preparation

What a perfect day! Our mower has been in the shop for three weeks now, so we borrowed Tim's and the yard looks great. We were worried moles had destroyed quite a bit of it, but it didn't look too bad. I re-potted all of the houseplants and hosed off the dust. I also opened the windows and doors to air out the house. It seems we skipped spring and went straight to summer, but I am so glad to have warm weather again.

I took an inventory of our plants to transplant into the garden. Many we are going to start straight from seeds once we get it tilled this week. The fractions below are successful starts /seeds we attempted to plant, if that makes sense. So far we have the following:
17/18 spinach
15/18 onions
11/18 celery
16/18 parsley
17/18 big beef tomatoes
1/9 thyme (planted more seeds in a container today)
7/9 rosemary (planted more seeds in a container today)
13/18 beans
14/18 marigolds
17/18 sugar snap peas
18/18 snow peas
4/18 great lakes head lettuce
11/18 jalapeno peppers
5/18 cayenne peppers
3/18 mixed greens leaf lettuce (planted more seeds in a container today)
0/18 basil, after 2 attempts, I think we're going to buy some started plants instead
13/18 okra

We're going to plant carrots, pumpkins, watermelon, corn, sunflowers, and cantaloupe directly into the ground. My grandfather might also be bringing some seed potatoes by this Friday. The garden is 50' x 20' and after much debate, we've decided to plant in rows instead of raised beds this year. We may still change our minds between now and the time we plant.

I bought this bench at a yard sale for $8 and painted it today. It's still a little rough, but once I find or make some kind of cushion for it, it will be just fine.


I brought all of the plant starts outside to the porch for some wind exposure.



My hands were so swollen after all of the yard work (from allergies), I couldn't even get my ring to turn.


Mom and dad came over for dinner and we saw a red fox near the corral. She was awesome to see, but I'm a little concerned about our chicken and duck plans for the coming weeks.



Ben in his Sunday best.