Baby Garden!

The monsoons haven't hit yet...so we're still at baby garden stage.  As I type, I can smell rain, so it'll be soon!  Every time they hit, the garden goes crazy!  The setup and planting stage of gardening is so very time consuming...it's very exciting to be nearly done, so that the growing and picking can begin.

This year, we're trying out semi-permanent beds. The setup allows us to decide in advance which beds will house which crops, so that fertilization/layout/watering can all be looked at.  This year, we staked them out and added wood chips in the walkways to help define them.  The wooden stakes turned out to be really useful in keeping long hoses in the walkways and off of delicate plants.  As the hoses get pulled around, they catch on the stakes and it has helped direct them.

Here's the newly replanted (ahem) carrots and greens bed...I planted the darned thing three weeks ago...and I  got three whole chard plants to sprout.  UGH!  So, apparently, carrots don't appreciate light hand-watering...at least in my soil.  So, this time I've got soaker hoses down for slow watering that won't wash the seeds away.  Really hoping this works as well as the last two years.  I've got some Cosmic Purple carrots in there, along with Nantes and some Chantenay.  Yum! C'mon babies, sprout!

Here's the three types of corn we're growing.  You can see the woodchip walkways.  The watering for the corn and beans are soaker hoses coming off of pvc manifolds.  It allows one hose to water 8-25 ft rows at a time.  Very helpful when attempting to water AND manage three kids, ha!  The far back corn was planted three weeks before the corn in the foreground.  At the back is blue drying corn and popcorn, the front is sweet corn.  There is also some drying beans in the back of the picture.  The fifth wheel, sadly...is on the neighbor's property...

Here is the tomato/pepper bed.  The metal wall is to minimize the wind on the plants and increase the heat.  The wall-o-waters will help hold in heat too...let's hope this helps the plants set fruit!  I was completely caught off guard with how quickly the plants grew this season, and really missed the good window on adding tomato cages within the wall-o-waters.  I'll post pics later of the after, but squeezing the plants into the cages was something like wrestling an octopus into a sweater, yikes.

Very excited to see what happens when the rain arrives.  Lots of expectations for this garden!