Spring Fever: Planting after the last frost

I am so very excited about my garden now that I can plant everything! 

First of all, I would like to say that growing plants in our windows was a complete failure :-(. We did have some plants come up, but then they got too dry. I watered them every day, but they just died on me anyway! But - we did transfer the potting soil and the remaining seeds into the ground. So hopefully, we will be able to keep the ground wet enough with soaker and sprinkler hoses to keep things alive.

The first thing we have had bloom is our rosebush! The roses are kind of a fuchsia/lipstick pink.We didn't plant this bush, but I did prune it a few months ago and I am so very glad I did! I am not sure what kind of rosebush it is, but I will do some research and then I will know how to take care of it throughout the summer. 

The chile plants

The South Garden

The "South Garden" area has the following things planted in it from left to right: Sunflowers, cucumbers, okra, basil and tomatoes, squash, cayenne peppers (with a New Mexico chile pepper plant at the end of the row), Jalapeno peppers (with a Sandia chile pepper plant at the end of the row), Romanian peppers, and banana peppers.  

The tomato plants

The tomato plants are all heirloom plants we got at Home Depot because our lovely cats spilled the planter that the tomatoes were growing in. (Those were actually our only successful window plants!) 

We have Mortgage Lifter, German Johnson, Red Beefsteak, Purple Cherokee, and Marion tomatoes (all are heirloom tomatoes).

The New Mexico and Sandia Chile pepper plants were also from Home Depot because I was worried that the other pepper plants would not do very well. 

Lily and bee balm transplants, marigolds are to the right of the Bee Balm, kale is to the right of the lilies. 

I planted beans here in front of our steps

In front of our sidewalk, we have a nice little area with a variety of things. From left to right, we have bee balm, marigolds, and lilies, then in the middle there are nasturiums and below them are kale. Then to the right I planted wildflowers and pinto bush beans. Then furthest right (close to the pepper plants) I planted anasazi beans and a few nasturtium seeds. I am planning to put some trellises in the garden for the beans.

Bee balm 

In front of our window, I planted cilantro and Zinnias. There are no plants here yet, but we are watering faithfully every day! 

I put up a "Welcome" sign near the corner of our house and I love it!

The "East Garden" area is by far the biggest area we have and we are still figuring out how to arrange the hoses so that we will get enough water to everything. From left to right (or south to north) we planted marigolds, beets, carrots, spinach, chives, radishes, onions, marigolds, oregano, echinacea, sweet peas, parsley, and cosmos. We still have room for three more rows, so I am going to ask Daniel what vegetable we left out that he wants to plant. I am thinking zucchini and maybe green beans. 

Anyway, this has been so fun and exciting. We actually have some beets coming up already, I hope the other things come up as well. It is all a grand experiment.

Oh, and we have not added any compost yet because I keep adding stuff to the bin. I am thinking about getting a separate bucket to put scraps in for a few weeks so that we can get all the compost in the bin ready to spread on the garden. We have quite a bit and I think it will really help our plants!