My garden has officially been planted for the 2023 season.

final garden

The garden came together easily over a couple hours on Memorial Day (we loved having a paid vacation to garden). A decent portion was me attempting square foot gardening* for the first time. I ended up using some twine and a measuring tape to lay out the garden and I weighted the twine down with rocks. It actually worked out super well.

Also, there are a lot of tomato plants with no trellises! Sammy is planning on making me some wood trellises for my tomato plants and we will share the building process for you all to follow along with (stay tuned)!

I am hoping my $5 autumn décor scarecrow will work efficiently to ward off birds from eating my corn and sunflower seeds. I have heard stories about crows specifically finding those seeds. I looked out my window and the scarecrow made me jump, so I think it will do it’s job nicely!

*square foot gardening uses square foot rows and column to determine spacing requirements for plants in a garden.

Garden layout – changes and why

A big factor that led me to change my garden layout is the dimensions of the garden changed. It was only a couple of feet off but with the square foot gardening I was planning, it really affected my set-up. It is more of a square than a rectangle now!

I also changed where some of my squash and melons were planted just because when I was planting it the vibe felt off, so I listened to that feeling and switched them around.

But most importantly I had got a comment that certain herbs can “take over an area” (shoutout to my cousin Jessie for watching gardening videos on tiktok). I want to try to make a couple of my herbs perennials so I don’t want them to grow too big and overtake the garden.

So, I have decided to just plant my herbs in a pot this year and make a separate herb garden next year so they can grow all they want.

First berries planted

So far the strawberries and rhubarb have been planted in a little nook by the fence! I still need to plant the rest of the berries, but I am excited for these ones to go in!

I got a couple different stages of berries when I was at the nursery last. I love buying plants.

I am not sure if all of them will live, but I hope I can make one strawberry rhubarb pie at least from the plants this year!

Learning the hard way – psa

Wanna know something fun? Apparently black fly bites can swell, especially in sensitive skin areas. Also, black flies like to bite the face area a lot.

While gardening I started to get bit by black flies. It didn’t seem that bad and I wanted to finish what I was working on. After I was done, I put on bug spray and got back to gardening. I guess that 5-10 minute period was enough to get 3 black fly bites around the same eye. One by my eyebrow, one directly below my tear duct, and one directly on the outside of my eye.

I came inside and Sammy asked me if I had a black eye, in a very concerned tone. This freaked me out, and I went and looked in the mirror and there were little pin-pricks of blood dripping from all 3 bites and my eye was swollen in the bite regions.

I thought the black eye/a bit of swelling at the bite areas was it; however, I woke up with my eye swollen almost completely shut – luckily my eyesight was completely fine and there was no eye damage.

I am on day 3 currently while writing this, but all day Benadryl, cold compresses, and my eye is finally starting to reduce swelling.

General PSA: using bug spray or a bug night while gardening into the evening is a must!

I would love to hear about anyone else’s adventures from putting their gardens together this year! Hopefully it was less chaotic than mine was. That being said, the putting the seeds/seedlings in went as smooth as it could and I am happy I have a funny story to tell!

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Next week is all about herbs!

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