Perfect Day

Yesterday was gorgeous. A perfect day for me in weather, mindset and time to catch up in the garden. After several weeks of travel, I needed to get busy. I gathered my tools, extra pots, hat, water and seed packets for the day and thought about my plans. I wanted to:

• Plant two varieties of sunflowers on the side of the house in the front and in various spots in the back
• Transplant and stake extra tomato plants to new containers
• Plant squash and zucchini on the hill
• Weed the shade garden along the neighbor's fence and ready it for new planting
• Start jalapeno seeds in a pot (seedlings died off during my travel neglect)
• Start cosmo flower seeds in pots (an old favorite from my first garden as a child)
• Start coleus seeds for the shade bed

The seed starting is a bit late for many of the plants, but since I have the seeds I wanted to make the most of them. Needless to say I didn't quite get all of this accomplished!

I started off by attacking the weeds and liriope overgrowing their space along my neighbor Spenser's house on the northwest side of our house in the front. This is a space that was pretty much a barren wasteland when we first moved in. It was hard clay with no plant life save a few, sad ornamental grasses Spenser tossed in when the contractors who redid our house weren't looking. Last year I added in the liriope and planted coreopsis. The "Croatian Coreopis" bloomed once last year and dried out. This year, we've had such a nice, cool spring, the plants are better established and I'm hoping the flowers will last all summer as they should. I planted two varieties of sunflowers between the liriope and coreopis:

• Sunflower Flash Blend in the back along the brick wall (a mix of red, orange, yellow and white varieties that grow to 5' - 8'.)
• Sunflower Elves Blend in the front near the gravel path (a mix of yellow dwarf sunflowers that grow to 1' - 2')

Next I added some compost to the ground, covered it with a fresh load of pine mulch, added slow release fertilizer and then watered the bed. With luck, this space will be teeming with flowers throughout the summer!

Here is the NW garden map, as its currently planted and a photo of what it looks like after yesterday's additions:

Now that was just number one on my list and I had to re-prioritize a bit understanding that I had been ambitious in my planning for the day.  Next I planted the Elves Blend sunflowers in the tomato gardens in the back. That was quick enough since the beds were recently planted and in good shape.

I planted Jalapeno Early Chile Pepper seed in pots. I had planted these in the basement and they came up, but didn't do so well with my neglect while traveling. It's a bit late for such seed starting now, but I'm going to try it and see if the seeds and weather will cooperate. I also planted the cosmo seeds in a number of pots. They'll do best in the ground but once the plants are big enough, I'll transplant them to the hillside.

I transplanted the remaining tomato plant to give away to good homes. Let me know if you are interested:

And then I was tired. I used my last bit of energy to harvest a huge amount of kale and lettuces. They've grown huge and out of control. The cool, wet spring weather has provided my best crop of greens yet! Much, much more than we can possibly eat. Come on over and get some!

red leaf lettuce

swiss chard

mystery lettuce

romaine lettuce