Ahhhh Springtime Part Deux

So this weekend (after spending most of last in Death Valley on vacation) we were a wee bit ambitious. We had prepped the area for our veggie garden a couple of weeks ago. This morning we went to my favorite toy store (Lowes) and got stuff to put the garden in.

We spent most of Saturday afternoon doing maintenance around the property. I had picked up a new 4 cycle Toro weed whacker and whacked most of our half acre lot (okay, it only feels like most of it. there's still a good size chunk to go). The winter rains had turned the driveway edges into a jungle and it wouldn't be long before code enforcement tagged us so I needed to get it done. Dug out an old overgrown blood grass plant and spread a soil sterlilant on the hillside to keep down future weed growth.

At Lowes today we picked up a selection of pepper plants, tomoatoes, flowers, cucumbers, and a few cubic feet of mulch. We first added about a hundred pounds of amendment to the garden area, rototilled it in, and then got the plants in. Planted some sacrificial marigolds at the row ends.

Here's a row of peppers in a raised bed:

Adjacent to those are the tomatoes (one is a hybrid called Goliath that bears fruit up to 24 ounces each) and at the far end the cukes are planted in front of the trellis.

The watering is done via buried soaker hose and the whole thing has several inches of mulch on top to conserve moisture

Behind the trellis and past the Meyer lemon tree I have a Thompson seedless grape vine and some lavender growing. The grape vine is about 10 years old and it and the lavender are coming back in.

The area we had the garden in last year (about half the size) was looking pretty bare so we picked up some flowers and planted a bed of Freesia's,Persian Buttercup, Cape Daisy Iringa, and Felicia Daisy's (blue)