Diggin in the Dirt

Did you know that people spend somewhere around 90% of their time indoors?  When the sun's out, I try to reduce that percentage... hence the lack in posts recently!  

I've been planting seeds, cleaning up the leftover dead stuff from last year, reorganizing our garden hoses, and getting ready to put in our vegetables in the next week or so.  It seems a little early, but it was 85 this weekend... I think we skipped spring here in NW Ohio and went straight into June!

 

We're expanding our vegetable selection this year, and reorganizing our raised beds.  Last year we had an overabundance of tomatoes and cucumbers but only one lonely squash and no sweet corn... this year we're cutting back to two tomato plants, one bush cucumber and no peppers (since we didn't eat any of them last year).  We're putting the sweet corn all together in one bed in the hopes of better pollination this time, and we're moving the squash into one of the bigger boxes too.  We're adding zucchini, carrots, and radishes out back, and we've already put beans along the fence and peas on the trellis.  And on the front porch we've filled our big tiered pots with arugula, salad greens, and iceberg lettuce. 

 Our raspberries are looking great this year, but I don't know yet if the strawberries are going to bounce back... they froze one too many times over the winter I think, and they're not coming in very well.  I'll give them a little more time with the sun though.  We're sharing a small bed with our neighbor too, putting potatoes, pumpkins and watermelon there.  Not too bad for a tiny little yard!  If we owned this house rather than renting (from the coolest landlords ever, can you tell?), we'd try our hand at fruit trees even.  But I think that (and chickens!) will have to wait until we buy our own homestead!

I planted some new flowers this year too, from seed mostly so I'm crossing my fingers.  I started some Nasturtiums and California Poppies inside, but the poppies got too dry once and that's all it took to kill them.  But the Nasturtiums are now in the side bed outside the fence, and looking happy.  I'm excited to try them on salads this summer!  Just today I bought some more seeds to direct sow, Silver Princess Daisies and Painted Daisies (which I mixed together in my hand before sowing), and some Iceflower to go along the edge of the rock walls out front.  I also got two more packets of California Poppies and put them in the fence bed too, to fill in a bit around the bulbs & Nasturtiums.  Lastly I got some Lupine and Morning Glory to put in the back beds where it's a bit more shady, and very empty!  We have one trellis that's always been empty since we moved here, so I'm going to send the Morning Glory up it.  I had also gotten some more Hosta and Daylily roots that I planted last week that are coming up nicely.

I'll be sure to post more pictures as the season progresses!