Playing in the Dirt: Part 1

Since I obviously needed yet another hobby, welcome to my foray into gardening.  Okay, I have gardened, or helped garden, my mom has always had a lovely garden, wonderful roses, but neither of us have ever attempted a vegetable garden.
My boyfriend lives in a guest house and the front neighbors and us decided to plant vegetable gardens in a flower bed in the back of his yard, that had become overgrown.  So they cleared it out and planted their seeds, and we began planning what we wanted to grow.  This got my mom inspired to do one too, she always grows tomatoes, but we've never done a real veggie garden, so here we go!  I've decided to blog the progress of both.
We went to the nursery and got a whole slew of seeds and plants, some compost, and some markers.  We probably went a little nuts, but we are planting two different gardens.  Here's the booty!

 So mom and I started a nice big barrel looking planter for an herb garden.  We had some cilantro we'd been growing in the greenhouse window from seeds, and then we transplanted the dill, rosemary, and thyme plants we had gotten.  After a couple days we could tell squirrels were using it to bury things, so that should be fun.

 So today I got the Vegetable Garden at my boyfriend's going.  Both gardens have some duplicates and some differences.  We had already planted Garlic by planting cloves in the ground and those had already sprouted about 8" (bottom left foreground) which is very exciting, and some tomato seeds have already started to sprout very tiny.  So today we planted Green and Yellow Sweet Onions, Artichoke all from seeds.  Green Bean,  3 Bibb Lettuce, and Strawberry Plants.  All of which I will be planting with mom.  Then we also planted Jalapeno seeds (for the boy who likes spicy stuff) and a Black Beauty Eggplant. (plant)

 The herbs we did are mostly the same, I had started him an herb garden, which he took great care of, so we transplanted those, Basil, Chives, and Parsley (stupid parsley as we call it, because we don't really use it) then the Dill, Rosemary and Thyme plants I had gotten at the same time as the ones I planted with mom.

I was really impressed with the soil, I think all the weeds that had been there before the neighbor cleared it out had really done some good work, and it even seemed composty!  So we labeled and watered, and are hoping for the best. It was nice and overcast so it was not fatiguing at all, and it may even rain tomorrow which would be great. Weather permitting I want to prep the soil and set up our planting areas for mom and I to get planting.  There are some flowers I would love to get in the ground too.

Anyway, I will definitely keep you updated on the progress. I am really excited about these gardens, there is something comforting and triumphant about planting, my guy kept singing "Circle of Life"  I am reading The Year I Ate My Yard and I love his philosophy.  Read it, even if you don't want to garden!

Cheers   

~Chelsea