I planted the first part of my garden today: Tomatoes, zucchini, and eggplant. Next up is herbs in the little pots, and then later this month once it warms up a bit, there shall be radishes and carrots (from seed.)

This winter, I tried something a bit different, and I have to say it made my life MUCH easier when spring prep came: After pulling out last years plants and de-weeding, I put large pieces of cardboard over the dirt and weighted it down. Winter rains plus bugs and critters in the soil helped mulch it up all nice, so all I had to do this spring was pull off the rotting cardboard (it didn’t totally decompose, but I got a late start) and then I just tilled the soil a bit. No grass, no weeds under there! Woohoo! Then I just added a bit of fresh top soil to add some nutrients, then just made it all nice and flat, then planted my little sprouts.

I also expanded my garden a bit this year, adding another 10 square feet or so. If I was really ambitious and the “landlady” would let me, I’d turn the whole backyard into a garden, but honestly I don’t think I’m up to THAT much work.

Here’s a picture:

First harvest:

My tomatoes also have baby green tomatoes on them, my carrots are coming along (they’re about 3-4″ tall now) and my peppers have blossoms and will hopefully be forming little fruits soon. All my herbs are growing (even my parsley, finally, yay!) The catnip is doing particularly well, despite being nibbled on by strays and plucked at by me. My jalapeno was looking a bit wilty though, I think it wasn’t getting enough light, so I moved it a bit and it now seems to be doing better.

The only thing that has not done too well is the lettuce, which I only got ONE little sprout from a 10′ long row of seed tape, and my zucchini and eggplant seeds, neither of which has shown any sign of life whatsoever. I think they’re really a late summer/early fall crop though, so maybe nature will kick in in a couple months, if not, I’ll replant. They are planted a bit too close to the fence to get much light, so that might be the problem.

I planted a third crop of radishes today after harvesting most of the first. In a couple weeks, I’ll plant another one. And I also replanted most of the row of lettuce one more time, maybe they’ll take this time. If not, I’ll wait. Lettuce doesn’t generally like hot weather though, so if this crop doesn’t take, that’ll it be until at least fall, or maybe early next “spring” (like January hehe.)

It’s been four weeks since I planted my little veggie garden, and it’s time for an update!

Here’s my tomatoes on April 2:

And here they are today:

Here are my carrots (back) and radishes (front) 28 days after I planted them from seed (the lettuce either hasn’t sprouted yet or doesn’t like me, not sure.)

Here are some pictures of the herbs, I didn’t post pictures of them before, because most of them were either so small and pathetic or I planted them from seed.

Cilantro:

Marjoram:

Dill:

Catnip:

I didn’t bother to take pictures of my peppers, the bell peppers don’t seem to have grown much, and the other peppers are kind of boring. Once they fruit I’ll take pictures. My zucchini and eggplant haven’t sprouted yet, hopefully it’s still too cold for them. If they don’t sprout then I’ll try again in fall.

Things seem to be growing a bit slowly, which has happened before due to cold weather. Normally California is warm and sunny by this time of year, so far we’ve had pretty dreadful winter-like weather. Same thing happened last year, and the year before that, my carrots took TWO MONTHS to sprout, but when they did they grew like crazy. So, all hope is not lost yet. My second batch of radishes is almost the same size as the first one planted two weeks earlier. But they’re just starting to get “red bits” and the first batch will hopefully be ripe soon (they’re already a week late.)

I got the first part of my plants in the ground today:

• Tomatoes
• Bell Peppers
• Zucchini
• Eggplant
• Carrots
• Lettuce
• Radishes

I only planted about a foot long row of carrots, lettuce and radishes, partly because I don’t know how well they’ll grow this time of year, and partly so I can stagger the harvest if they do take. If all goes well, I’ll plant another “crop” in about three weeks.

Tomorrow, I’m planning to transplant my herbs from the windowsill and plant my hot pepper plants in pots. If I’m not too tired, I’ll pot up some additional herbs in pots, as well as replenish the catnip farm.

Then it’s just water and wait until the baby seedlings come up! I put down some weed cloth stuff to keep cats, birds and other critters from messing with my my newly planted seeds. It also helps keep the soil moist so the little seeds don’t dry out. Once the seedlings come up, I’ll thin if necessary, I’m planning to do 2-3 eggplants and 1-2 zucchini, and 2-3 lettuce. I will probably keep however many carrots and radishes come up, but we’ll see.  Then in a few weeks I’ll plant more. I think I have enough room to do 3-4 “crops” so it’s about one per month more or less (or until the weather gets too hot, I’ll see how it goes and adjust as needed.)

I also planted some of the wildflower seed so I’ll have a nice flower garden to look out through the kitchen window.  The wildflower mix I bought has echinacea and evening primrose in it too! Both are medicinal herbs.

Below are some pictures:

I went out and got my veggie plants today. I will be planting:

• Tomatoes – Roma and Heirloom Homestead
• Peppers – Red, Green and Yellow Bell
• Chili Peppers – Jalapeño and Pablano (Ancho)
• Carrots – Nantes Coreless (seed)
• Lettuce – Salad Bowl (seed)
• Radish – Cherry Belle (seed)
• Eggplant – Black Beauty (seed)
• Zucchini – Burpee’s Fordhook (seed)
• Oregano (seed)
• Cilantro (seed)
• Parsley – Italian and Curled (seed)
• Dill (seed)
• Chives (seed)
• Sweet Marjoram (seed)
• Basil – Genovese (seed)
• CATNIP! (seed)

Most of the herbs I’ve already started on my windowsill, so I’ll just be transplanting those to bigger pots outside.  The other seeds are mostly late summer/early fall stuff that I won’t be planting yet but figured I might as well go ahead and buy ‘em.  I’ll have a go with some of the lettuce seeds, if it’s too hot and they bolt, oh well, but I’d love to have fresh lettuce all Spring & Summer if it’ll grow because I eat a LOT of lettuce in the warm months and it’s so freaking expensive at the store.

It will be nice to have the ingredients for homemade salsa again, did it once before and the junk you buy in the store doesn’t compare to fresh, homemade salsa, and you can spike it to whatever hotness you want. I can grow onions and garlic too if I really want but they’re both cheap at the store so I probably won’t bother. The radishes and parsley are for my mom. The catnip is for the Garden Supervisor (the cat.)

I also bought a couple bags of organic planting mix to buff up the dirt, and I got a bag of shade-friendly wildflowers for the back yard since the Governor of California announced that our drought is officially OVER (for now haha.) Figured I better plant flowers while I can water them.

I will post pictures of the little plants once they’re all set up in their new home.