I announced to The Babe this morning that I had a PLAN. (She made a disparaging comment; she's a hard woman.) This plan involved going to Jerry's and picking up bedding plants for the barrels and pots in the backyard, grout cleaner and sealers to deal with a grouting problem in the shower, and concrete to erect three trellis we've been waiting for warm weather to put up.
This was an acceptable plan, so off we truddled. (Yeah, it's a word; deal with it!) We ended up buying about $200 of bedding plants, flowers and vegies both. Lots more flowers because there is always room for more flowers and vegies for the barrels. Last year's attempt to put the barrels in the back had not been successful because we didn't put drainage holes in them and they turned into aquaculture tubs. We bought a spade bit a few weeks ago and drilled holes in the barrels (which drained prodigiously) and they've been okay since then. So this time for sure (in my best Bullwinkle voice.) I got a lot of tomatoes, including Sweet 100s, the first cherry tomato I grew in 1979, the very first year Patricia and I started gardening, Seattle's best, an heirloom tomato popular in the Puget Sound, and Better Boy VFN. There's also a Sweet Pea clustering cherry tomato that I'm not familiar with, but wotthehell? I also got two sweet red peppers--Red Knight--and two serrano peppers, a lot of sweet basil, and yellow and patty pan squashes. All of this is My Kinda Garden Produce.
The Babe and I hadn't communicated about how many barrels were going to be used for what, so she ended up buying a lot of very nice flowers--brachysome, some yummy begonias with coleus-like leaves, nemesia, trailing lobelia, white geraniums, and half a dozen other flowers--that she'd thought were going into the same barrels and pots.
We managed to get most of the flowers and all the vegies into the barrels and pots that we've got, but I need to buy several more 2-gallon plastic pots tomorrow for some of the oddments. Things are well-fertilized with a Miracle-Gro slow-release fertilizer, so I think we should be okay. 36" apart? Pfui! They'll live with 6" or so. The Babe also planted large numbers of flowers out front to fill in spaces that didn't have quite enough flowers.
I'm feeling a bit creaky, but all the plants are looking good this evening and showing no signs of transplant shock. I'll go downstairs and soak several packets of nasturtium, sunflower, and marigold seeds for planting in starter packs tomorrow. And I may make a drink. A drink would be good.
(BTW, I'm finally making use of post labels. In my copious free time, I hope to slowly work through past posts here and there and add labels to them for easier searching and cross-referencing. If naught else, just remembering to add them to new posts will be a step forward.)
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