Welcome to my Starting a garden blog Post #22 🌻🙂
First a flower #alwaysaflower
Shasta Daisies are blooming for us right now. This was my wife's late mother's favorite flower so my wife likes to have some around.
Black Eyed Susans are still blooming. This one is in a different bed that doesn't get as much sun. Some of the other beds I have pictured previously are on the decline.
A few Hydrangeas have managed to bloom. The bunnies apparently really like the tender hydrangea new growth and have been keeping some of the plants eaten all the way down to the ground.
This Hydrangea is well past its prime but I liked the picture.
And since the Shasta Daisies are new this week, here's another 😊
Now into the garden... 👨🌾🌿
Today's post is about the best laid plans... Here is a photo from April of our brand new raised garden beds, carefully laid out for planting. We painstakingly laid out the garden for the appropriate plant adjacencies and which plants to put in the deeper beds.
The first hint at a problem... we had more brussel sprout seedlings than anticipated so we just planted them all filling the space allocated.
Here's that bed now 🙁 We should have thinned these out probably but they are still looking healthy.
Next came the peppers. The original plan was one per square foot grid section - as shown in the photo when we started planting. But again we had plenty of healthy seedlings so we filled in between the plants using all the seedlings.
Peppers have been really coming on with the hot weather. Again so far so good but could've probably thinned out as much as half these plants.
Here are the cucumbers and zuchinnis about a week after planting. We put in straw to help hold the moisture and discourage the weeds. We were able to stick to our planned spacing pretty well in this bed.
Even in this bed that we mostly stuck to our plans, these vines needed more space. We added trellis for the cucumbers. In this bed and two of the others, we took out the marigolds we planted between the veggies. The marigolds were not getting any sun and the leaves had started to rot or maybe mold.
The final bed has two pumpkin plants and three butternut squash along the left edge. Again pretty much as planned.
The pumpkin bed is full too. We routed the vines outside the bed.
The squash vines are filling the center walkway space.
The pumpkin vines are also growing outside the bed along and through 👀 the garden fence.
Take aways for next year:
Stick to plant spacing and plan.
Plan vined plants to utilize space outside of beds. And better use trellis to give vines more space.
Plant flowers outside beds. Sunflower and marigolds either in pots or directly in ground outside of the beds. Possible even plant flowers outside the garden fence.
Lesson: Even if you think you have lots of space, good spacing planning is key to a successful garden 👍
Thanks for checking out my blog this week ☮️😎
Bonus pic:
Another day in paradise 😁 Beautiful here today at Lake Dunmore, Addison County, Vermont. Have a great week!