Things are taking off around the garden. Last Tuesday we officially planted the veggies – transplanted the tomatoes and peppers, and sowed the seeds for radishes, beets, watermelon, zucchini, cucumbers, squash, and beans. We watered them once and have since let Mother Nature handle the rest. They will need watered again tomorrow morning since we haven’t had enough rain for them, but later this week the forecast calls for rain so that will take care of the watering duties for us.
Radishes are sprouted, though they’re always the fastest to sprout for us, and I think that top picture is my beet sprouts. I’m leaving them alone for now until I know for sure – we have weeds that like to take over that look deceptively like our veggie seedlings. I’m pretty sure they are the beets, because they’re growing in the rows that I made. Or at least what I think are the rows. I don’t have anything in the way of garden markers, so it’s hard to be sure. I dug around the beds to find a few rocks that I could use to mark where some things were planted, and when those were used I broke down an old corn stalk and used the stem to mark the seed spots. But those just aren’t pretty, and I think I might try to find those larger smooth river rocks to paint as my markers. (Oh, my beans have sprouted, too! Last year they never did anything and I’m quite excited to have beans this year!)
My mom’s peony is about to bloom, too. I say “my mom’s” because they’ve been in our family since I was a kid. We had them at the first house I remember, and when we moved my mom dug them up and brought them with us. She decided a few years ago that she didn’t want them anymore and dug them up and gave them to me, and I proceeded to plant them in the totally wrong place and very nearly killed them off. I moved them and managed to salvage them, and each year they get a little bigger and a little stronger and produce another bloom.
The raspberries have filled in nicely, but I’m still not sure I want to keep them. We’ll see how they produce this year and how many berries I get off of them. My poor blueberry next to them is hanging on but not well and I think I might just rip it out this year and replace it with something else. I don’t have the time to baby it and if it can’t grow where I put it then something else needs to go there that will be productive for us.
Oh, and roses! My roses! My absolute favorite beauty of the garden! ♥ All 3 plants are absolutely covered in buds for blooms, with just a few of them starting to give me a peek of their colors and even fewer close to blooming. Like every year, there will be a few early bloomers but the majority of the blooms will burst all at once. They’re really a gorgeous, beautiful variety of rose though I know around here they’re well over-used in landscaping for businesses (they also tend to prune them back pretty far, and I like mine nice and big and bushy).
