My bucket garden

My Burpee garden showed up last week.  It was in pretty sad shape by the time it reached our house.  It looked as if the box had been tipped over and stepped on a few times.  None of the tags were in the correct pots, so I’m not positive what I have.  I know I have tomatoes, peppers, and basil, but that’s about all I know. Since our dirt is essentially clay, I decided to plant the garden in Lucent’s  old litter buckets.  I drilled drainage holes in the sides and bottom of the buckets, filled them up in the bottom with about an inch of gravel and/or broken clay pots, and then filled up the buckets with several pounds of potting soil.  The plants seem to be doing pretty good, so far.  The pepper plants still look pretty peaked, but maybe that’s just how pepper plants look?

Hopefully the plants will survive and produce something.  The tomato plants already have some flowers on them.

I also planted vincas, impatiens, and 4 hostas, and pulled up the lawn carpet that had started to encroach on our front sidewalk.  I raked the old mulch off of the bed on the south-side of the house and pulled a bunch of weeds from everywhere.  I worked outside for about four hours – most of the time on my knees, leaning forward pulling or digging.  It was Thursday of the following week before my lower back and hamstrings felt normal again.  Gardening is hard work.  Wah, I know.

Most of the hard work is done now.  I just need to get some new mulch and keep on top of the weeding.  I probably should plant some stuff in the bed in the northeast corner of the house, too.  I just don’t know if I’m up to that yet.  Plus, our garden hose doesn’t reach that far, so I would have to water any plants over there with a watering can, and that’s tedious.  This Fall, after we re-paint the front of the house, I need to take the time to plan out what I want to plant.  I need to put in some grasses or bushes and some perennials, so that each summer I don’t have to spend $50 on new plants and ruin my back and legs planting junk.  The only perennials we have now are peonies which are super beautiful right now.  Tim took these:

Here is the current state of my flower garden.  I’m hoping it will look amazing in 3-4 weeks.  I love vincas and impatiens – they are so easy to take care of, and they flower all summer long.

This year, for the first time, I also planted some flowers in pots on the patio.  If I can keep the rabbits from eating them, they are going to look super pretty back there.

So far I’ve been warding off squirrels and rabbits with a blood meal and coffee grounds mixed with cayenne pepper.  I’m going to attempt to cut Tim’s hair today, too, so some of that might end up as a warning around the plants too.

So, there are my gardening highlights. My gardening endeavors pale severely in comparison to the fantastic work of my other gardening friends:

http://prairieinalittlehouse.wordpress.com/

http://newlywoodwards.blogspot.com/

But, it’s a start!