Planting Complete!

Well after three back breaking intense days the garden is all in!  Ok...well...all but two plants that I have yet to find this year (a white and Japanese eggplant.)  Here is my little OCD garden chart for this year.  I highly recommend a chart so you can remember what varieties of each item you have planted.

I did a few things differently this year.  First up instead of newspaper under my mulch between rows I used a "gardening fabric."  It looks like plastic but is a fabric-y material that came in 3' widths 50' long.  This was beneficial for a couple reasons.  It was easier to handle than the newspaper (I tapped it in with pegs as I went so there wasn't an issue with blowing breezes.)  It also helped me with my row spacing.  Person I talked to at Home Depot said I "should" be able to lift it back up at the end of the season which would make getting the mulch up WAY easier than raking.  He said I should be able to re-use it for between 3-5 years.  We shall see if it was a good long term investment but it wasn't too expensive and was MUCH easier than newspaper.

Also last year I planted everything at once and then went back over the course of around 3 weeks time and laid all the paper and mulch.  This year I just didn't want to drag it out-I planted a row, them mulched a row.  By Sunday evening after two days and still not being done I wondered if this was the smartest way to go about the task-but by last night when I was DONE DONE-I was pleased I had just decided to knock it all out.

I'm a little worried all my transplanted pepper plants that I started from seed are just not strong/healthy enough to make it outside.  They are so tiny and already appear to be being eaten by something...

I moved all my herbs back outside and was happy that most of them made it through the winter, I have added a new basil plant, some flat leaf parsley and a new thyme plant.

As a side note, if you like keeping potted plants inside but have white carpet like I do (who puts in white carpet?) you should get a couple of these tubs that are supposed to sit under a washing machine.  I took a picture of this nasty one on purpose so you could see how they saved my carpet this winter!  I also used one under the seedling containers.

So I leave you with some tomatoes-nice, pretty, healthy plants. 

83 actual plants planted, 5 more rows of seed, 4 cages of seed and with everything mulched and ready I can get back to my real job-oh and The Hunger Games series!