Goth Garden- phase 1

Oh, my, what a busy day! J15 and I spent all morning at church. She was playing her violin at both services today and I was working at the plant sale. The plant sale was a HUGE success! We made $388 in proceeds for the Common Fund for our local Crisis Center. The common fund is supported by local religious communities and is used to help residents with financial needs such as utility bills they can't pay, etc.

Before the sale.

We had donations of veggie plants, hostas, perennials, herbs and some houseplants. I took 54 veggie and flower seedlings and at a "suggested donation" of $2 each, we sold all but 6 pepper plants and one eggplant. All the heirloom tomatoes I took went quickly, even the unusual varieties. The remaining veggie plants will be donated directly to the crisis center either for use in their community garden or for patrons to pick up to plant at home.

A happy customer!

I even was able to show some restraint and only came home with a few plants. I ended up with two types of oregano, a lonely brussels sprout plant, some wild phlox, a sedum that J15 really wanted and mint with a story. The mint was brought in by one of the other committee members. It is a start from one that she "obtained" while visiting a plantation in Louisiana (the one they used in Mint Juleps!)

The day was beautiful, after our morning frost, and I was able to get all of my little plants planted out. The extended forecast looks good so I'm thinking that this is the last frost of the year. Our usual last frost date is around May 10, and since there isn't going to be anyone home to water little seedlings later this week, they needed to find a home. This included J15's Goth Garden that we are constructing as part of our Kinder Garden challenge.

We got a good start on it!

Semi-dead grass from under shed panels.

We did sheet mulching over the grass to help speed up the process. Unfortunately, we were limited by the area we could cover by the number of newspapers we had on hand.

J15 (soon to be 16!!!) spreads topsoil.

We got all the little plants we had started planted in the garden. There are still a few that will be started in place from seed but those will wait until we have more newspaper to extend the beds and until we get back from Colorado.

Oh, this looks much more black in person!

The pansies and one purchased columbine are the only things blooming at the moment. We needed to go get more topsoil mid project and J15 also selected a Black Knight butterfly bush to go on the corner of the garage.

Phase 1 complete!!!

I also took a rocky part of the vegetable garden space and created a flower/herb garden. I hope to have the herb garden closer to the house eventually but we are still waiting to hear bids from the contractors who will install the new septic.

The herb garden.

This particular section of the garden has lots of gravel in it. We have seen from old aerial photos that they had a round bale feeder here so evidently they, at some point, dumped a load of gravel to keep the hay dry. It isn't really conducive to planting veggies in it- although I did last year- so I decided to turn it into a bed with all kinds of yummy plants to attract beneficial insects into the garden. It also has my kitchen herbs at the moment until I can construct my herb spiral.

We also got all the tomatoes and peppers planted in the garden as well as some zinnia's and my new brussels sprout plant.

I'm tired! But it a good tired, borne of a day of fulfilling work. I got hugs and kisses from my children for Mother's Day and I spoke to my Mom on the phone. I was disappointed that I couldn't go down to see her but she understood how busy we were today and I'll see her later this week at the wedding.

Now, it's time to get the boys to bed, set up coffee for the morning and crawl into bed,