Garden Party

So much has happened and I have been neglectful in sharing.  Sorry about that... I blame the beautiful weather, my (tri) training schedule, and the dogs.  Actually, the dogs have nothing to do with it, but why have them if you can't blame them for ludicrous things like not blogging?

As the title of this post suggests, Hubs and I have been busy planting our garden.  Finally.  Last year, we planted in late April.  This year, our weekends kept filling up before we could set aside time to make a garden plan.  Get it?  There was no time to plan for planning and everyone knows I am a planner.  Geesh.

Anyway, this past Saturday we finally said- enough is enough.  We sat down at the dining room table and pulled out our planting list from last year (our first year with a garden).  Last year we planted:

Carrots (finger-long), broccoli (which didn't produce), white onions, green onions, zucchini (another dud), cucumber, red peppers, green peppers, cherry tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, bibb lettuce, and red lettuce.

Last year

Right away we knew we wanted to eliminate the green onions and broccoli because we rarely used them.  We also knew that we wanted to plant the zucchini from a live plant this year because last year the seeds produced only failure.  In addition, we knew that we didn't want to plant lettuce this time around because we didn't need to-- The bibb lettuce from last year came back on its own and has been producing like a champ.

From there, we drew up plans to add some new produce to the mix.  Unfortunately, when our list of  wants was complete, we realized we didn't have enough space to plant everything.  We considered container gardening on the deck in addition to using our two raised beds, but Hubs had a winning idea-- Add on to our existing raised beds... or more accurately, connect them and fill in the space in between.

See the space in between the two beds?  Well, it's not there anymore!

Due to the nature of our existing beds, adding on turned out to be simple.  We headed over to Menards and purchased a 1"x4"x10' board.  We took the board home, cut it into four 2' long pieces (with a little length leftover for cut lines and boo-boos).  Each board was then slid into the grooves on our existing raised bed corner posts.  Presto change-o!  A revised, much more awesome, larger garden bed.   Breakdown: we used to have two 4'x4' garden beds.  We now have one 4'x10' garden bed. 

Here's what we planted:

Cucumbers (tzatziki here I come), zucchini (using live plants), summer squash, finger-long carrots, two strawberry plants, white onions, red onions, cilantro, basil, rosemary, parsley, oregano, cherry tomatoes, roma tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, serrano peppers, and the bibb lettuce (which just came back all on its own).

In addition to this, I also planted 60 gladiola bulbs in the flower beds surrounding the house, two new rosebushes in a corner of the backyard, two new blueberry bushes to aid the one that was planted last fall, and four fern plants to beautify the front porch (in hanging baskets).

It was a busy weekend, but wait until you hear what happened the weekend before.  We'll just backtrack until we're caught up and then I'll fill you in on my preparation for the sprint triathlon, which is coming up on June 10th.  So much to be excited about... I can just feel your anticipation mounting.