52 Card Project 2021: Week 17: Gardening

[pegkerr]

The weather has turned. Taxes are done. I have had my birthday. All of these are my annual signal that it is time to start thinking about gardening.

My garden was a big success last year: I had a few herb pots on the back stoop:



I had petunias in container boxes on the back patio:



I planted two City Pickers (enclosed garden beds with wheels). One was planted with a variety of greens so I could wander out into my backyard and pick the ingredients for a salad for lunch:



The other was planted with tomatoes and basil and it absolutely thrived. I was still picking tomatoes in October. Here it is when it was just planted:



and a month later:




All this success went to my head, and so I'm tackling my backyard with even greater energy and ambition this year. This year I plan to have three City Pickers, with trellises. I have planted two of them with twenty different plants of spring greens, cucumbers, pole beans, and I'll plant the third with tomatoes and basil again. Besides the boxes of petunias, I am setting out more garden pots on my patio and planting them with bee-friendly flowers. I will plant bee balm in the strip by the garage. I had planted a bulb garden last fall which is coming up beautifully, and since I'm getting more involved in cooking with herbs, I've enlarged the herb garden in pots on my back stoop. I bought potato bags and am planning on growing potatoes for the first time, and hey, why not try other root vegetables: beets, carrots, onions, too? In short, I'm going nuts.

This card turned out a little different than I originally envisioned when I started. I had taken pictures of the City Pickers and the herb pots and planned to include those. But I started with a semi-transparent picture of the cover of my garden journal for the background and layered over that the flowers that are included in the bee-friendly mix. I liked the look of that, so I just put in a few more layers, emphasizing delicacy, and at the last moment, overlaid that with the first page of my gardening journal. I like the result.

Gardening

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Click here to read about the 52 card project and see the year's gallery.

(The icon on this entry, of course, is from Lord of the Rings, from a passage about the thoughts of Sam Gamgee, master gardener.)

Comments

[pameladean]

Oh, that's lovely. It looks like a very fancy seed packet.

Are the wheels on the City Pickers so you can move stuff to get more or less sun, depending on requirements?

P.

[pegkerr]

Yes, the wheels are so you can move it, exactly. Last year, I didn't move them and the tomatoes were tied to the fence. I am hoping to persuade that neighbor to take down that fence this year (I did a land survey and it's literally on my property). And I'm painting the exterior of my house, so the one beside the house will have to be moved partway through the summer. That's why I added trellises to both.

Thanks! I'm really pleased with how this one turned out.

[pameladean]

Thanks for the information! I will have to look into those. I need to move my raised beds because they're being shaded out, but I can't make up my mind where to put them instead. Having a portable vegetable bed might be useful either temporarily or permanently.

P.

[pru]

this is amazing! I love your planters.

[pegkerr]

They are about thirty dollars at Menards, plus Miracle Grow soil, fertilizer and dolomite bring the cost up to $50. NO WEEDING because of the mulch cover. And they produce like gangbusters. I think they're absolutely great.

[aome]

In a year that's had so much death and suffering, I LOVE that you have found a niche for yourself in something LIVING. Your garden last year looks amazing. Hope this year is just as awesome.

Also: bunny!