My first real time garden update! And a lot of things have changed from my plans I have shared in the past couple posts in my Gardening Series for 2023.

Garden growth

I planted all my seeds on Memorial day. The last frost was over, it was 70° and sunny. A truly perfect day of gardening. We had a lovely couple days of sun and warm weather.

As of today, it has been 6 days of rain and 60’s. It looks like the next 4 days will be the same, with luckily a little less rain per day.

None of my warm weather vegetables have sprouted yet. My cold weather plants on the other hand, are thriving! Arugula, onion, and beets have all sprouted.

My tomatoes are living their best life – luckily they love the rain. And only 1 of my 29 tomatoes perished in the transplant. The rest are growing and looking more robust every day.

The sunflowers that I lined the garden with have started to sprout as well. We have a mourning dove pair that live at our house, rent free, driving our kitten inside through the window. Every morning I see them on the outskirts of my garden, so I was worried they were eating the sunflower seeds. Luckily we are looking good so far!

Weird but fun garden growth

I am having a weed problem! Except my weeds are squash seeds! We used a layer of our unfinished compost under the nice loam/compost top soil layer. And squash seeds keep germinating through. It really isn’t that bad of a problem to have, so I will take it.

A large cluster did form at the bottom of where a pumpkin plan is to be. I think they are from compost. Part of me is wondering if my pumpkin seeds just slid off their hill and germinated in the wrong spot. I plan to wait to pull them until I am sure they aren’t my pumpkins.

Berry plants

SOOO….We may have murdered our berry plants we got. You know… those ones I originally posted about. We made the foolish mistake of using potting soil instead of potting mix in the containers we were growing them in to start.

If you were like me, and didn’t really know the difference, here is the difference:

Potting Mix: NOT DIRT. Instead made from other organic material meant to help improve drainage. Used for container gardening.

Potting Soil: Garden soil. Meant for outdoor use. Made from dirt. Combo of sand, clay, loam, and sometimes compost.

Anyways, I used potting soil and my berry stems didn’t have enough roots to soak up all the moisture in the pots, so they stayed moist for a lot time. A bit too long for our liking, so we repotted adding in sand to the soil mix. This helped with drainage, but so far they have not bounced back.

This is a bummer, but honestly not a huge deal. I picked up those berries on a whim while at Home Depot. I spent like $30 for all of them. It was actually a super helpful learning experience and hopefully it will come in handy in the future.

At the local nursery, I picked up a blueberry bush, a raspberry bush, a blackberry bush, and another strawberry. Most of my other strawberries held up through my berry trial, so currently I have 9 strawberry plants in the ground, all at different stages!

We also found out we have wild strawberry all throughout our yard near the other berries, which is just a really cool thing.

Also, the thimbleberry may have perished in the berry water wars. We planted it and are hoping for the best, but I also ordered a live plant from a nursey online. Sammy and I both really want thimbleberries, so we were taking no risks.

Apple trees

You know how I said that we wanted a honeycrisp tree?? Well I went to the local nursey and there was a cute baby honeycrisp tree so I brought it home to surprise Sammy.

We officially have 3 apple trees in a triangle overlooking our garden, house, and pallet pile (the pallets are for a future post – building a compost hut.)

Besides that, out other apple trees are in full bloom for the year. They seem to be really healthy and loving the mulch bath we gave them. They especially love all the rain!

We plan to tie up the Spitzenberg so the branches start to separate more and help it grow more straight!

What is next

I still need to plant my herbs! Like I mentioned in my Garden Layout post, I have decided to have my herbs in containers. The rain is the main reason I haven’t planted them yet, it is cold and wet out. I would rather just wait and enjoy my time outside while I am planting.

Also, we have a garden box that spans the entirety of our house (70ft long x 4ft wide!) that is filled with rocks. We plan to shovel up the rocks, till up the packed down soil, and plant some native wildflowers all throughout the new bed. We have leftover loam/compost we plan to spread through the bed too! Hopefully add some nutrients back into the soil.

We have a Northeast native perennial wildflower seed pack for this front bed and the Northeast native perennial pollinator wildflower for the area surrounding our garden. I really want to promote a healthy pollinator population on our property. Maybe it will make up for all the Bees Bear eats…

We plan to transplant the Arborvitaes!

That is all for now! Keep on reading for next week, when I maybe finally plant my herbs. I will tell you all about them! I am sure the suspense is killing you…

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