Weekend Update

The garden box finally has everything in the ground.  It feels like a little sigh of relief to get all the plant babies in their places and started growing.  Several of our plants were ordered from the church as plants instead of just sticking the seeds in the ground. The tomatoes and peppers we got are gorgeous and came from a nursery in Gallatin, just a few miles up the road.  Not to mention that our plant pick-up time coincided with an awesome Wednesday night supper of veggie lasagna and parmesan polenta.  (after trying the polenta, Bill exclaimed, "This is just like fancy-people's cheese grits!"  That boy cracks me up)

Bill hard at work planting peppers

I have a few notes on some of the things we've added to our box, and the progress on some other thing guys:

Tomatoes

• Aside from the generic paste tomato we started with, all our tomatoes are heirlooms.  The tiny plants were still so delicate when we put them in the ground, I hope they'll be hardy enough to yield a bunch of yummy tomatoes

Peppers

• Revolutionary Bell and Sweet Banana - Heirlooms
• Carnival Bell - We tried to start these in seed cups for transplanting, but the drowned in one of Tennessee's recent spontaneous monsoons.  Seeds went straight into the ground.  The package reads like they need to be coddled a little bit, so we'll see if they do anything 
• Jalapeños - Came in a six-pack.  We've got one in the ground, but we're still looking for a trough style planter to stick the rest of them.  If we get all six planted we may have to learn to can or pickle them
• The seed surprise... maybe something's starting to come up.  I can't tell.

Root Things

• We didn't have as many onions and beets as we expected.  The seed cups didn't survive, and we needed the squares for other reasons
• Radishes - should be ready to harvest soon... but we took a sneak peek at one and it didn't look quite ready yet.  Maybe we'll give it another week or so.
• Carrots - seem to be doing well, but they need to be thinned,  with all that delicate greenery, how do you thin the carrots?  Having a hard time differentiating between what greens belong to what carrot.

Greens

• Sorrel - after Em and my cooking class with F. Scott's chef Kevin Ramquist, I was in love with Sorrel, but when I went to cook with it, I couldn't find it around the Kroger.  They did, however, have it at Gardens of Babylon in a six pack!  Into the garden they go!  It's a strange green (or herb?) that has a really fresh lemony flavor yum!

Description reads: French Sorrel - Tender, bright green leaves with lemon flavor.
 Good in salads, soups, & sauces, especially with fish

In the ground!

Peas

• Snow Peas - we planted a second generation of them.  The batch planted in March have already attached themselves to the trellis!  I'm like a proud mama bear!

Squash

• Again, tried some in seed cups, but they didn't work out.  Seeds straight into the ground for this batch
• UFO Squash - Looking good!

Flowers

Bartee Blue Iris

• Sweet peas - Coming up!  May need to trellis some soon
• Zinnias - not impressed so far... we'll see.
• Cosmos - cute... the greens sort of look like carrot greens
• Bartee Blue Iris - Bill's Grandma gave us a variety of Iris that has the family name.  She says it blooms a beautiful shade of blue.  Right now it's sitting in the garden spot while we clear our the patch we're going to stick it into.

Stepping Stones

• It broke my heart a little bit to throw stepping places into the garden, but there was just too many acrobatic stunts involved in getting to the back of the garden (before things were planted) to make it enjoyable getting to the back row.  Steps were a must.  Next time, we'll make sure things are within two squares reach.  

So now we're just looking at tending and maintaining and then HARVESTING (hopefully) from the garden box.  I can't wait!  In the mean time There's work to be done getting the rest of the yard into satisfactory shape.

A shot of the garden - nearly fully planted