The sunny veggie garden

(Okay, I feel like there's a whole post that goes ahead of this. But, I only have these photos right now...so my Memorial Day post will actually come later in June.

Finally...after digging, weeding, tilling and digging some more...the sunny veggie garden is in the ground! I'm thrilled to be working on this project with my dear friend and neighbor, Jen. We decided that the large garden in my yard has more sun, so we put in live plants. The smaller raised bed in her yard is under the shade of my silver maple tree, so her husband and brother raised the sides, and we need to add soil and we'll plant quick growing seeds like beans, peas, radishes, carrots, etc. We'll have another blog post to follow up on that project as we do it.

We planned it out, and then landed on some different ideas. We shopped together, we made some good decisions, and some not so good decisions. All that to say, and these two full time working moms got one done as of this week. So great to say that our sunny veggies are in the ground as of the end of May, 2012!

What did we plant?
We were so excited about gardening together, we knew that we wanted to plant tomatoes. A couple of years ago, I planted 9 tomato plants,and it wasn't enough to can any sauce. So...we thought that we'd need at least 12 plants - and at least 4 of them would be little cherry or grape sized tomatoes for salads and just for the kids to eat like candy. Well, we ended up purchasing 24 plants, and I had forgotten that my husband brought home two specialty plants from a co-worker. So...we gave away 6 plants to her church community garden, and planted 20 live plants that we hope will grow wonderful bounty for us and our neighbors. 

We also decided to add a couple of cucumber plants, 3 zucchini plants, one dill plant and some pumpkins, because the kids will love the jack-o-lanterns in October. We basically ran out of room even when digging out several chives & green onion plants, and we decided to leave them after I read an article on companion gardening that said onions add to the flavor of the tomatoes. Yum!

(Now as I re-read this, we'll have to move the dill away from the tomatoes so it doesn't stunt their growth.)