. . .How does your garden grow

     Today was a dedicated garden day.  The self watering seed starter set by Burpee that I bought to use with my heat mat and starter light, proved to be a very poor purchase.  The cells were much to small, the sprouts crowded each other, didn't have enough room for good root growth and as I discovered today, it was almost impossible to get the starts out without damaging the little plants and their roots.  Today is one month since I started the seed and I needed to get what did grow into the garden.
     As I had finally gotten the upper hand on the weeds, except in the paths, and since I had a roll of row cover and bought 10 very long fiberglass hoop poles so that I could plant the seedlings that I had and protect them from insect and cool night damage, it was the task of the day to plant.

The bed of cabbage, kale, chard, and broccoli after a weed check and before the cover went back on the box to protect them from cabbage worms.

Herbs, salad, marigolds and lavender.

The row cover protects 3 kinds of tomatoes, 3 kinds of peppers and behind it are two boxes of garlic and onions.

This cover hides the winter squash and the cucumbers at the end of the bed that has pea sprouts coming up to the trellis.

The grape bed got 3 Seminole pumpkins added to it.  There is still a 4 x 4' box waiting for the beans and part of the grape bed is waiting for a second planting of peas.  I am thinking about waiting until it is a bit later in the season and planting a compact raised bed for potatoes, using well sifted compost in a huge section of plastic culvert.  I would love to plant some eggplant, but each attempt has resulted in flea beetles stripping them of all leaves before they can even get a start.  I guess I could put them under one of the little tents too.  Next year I think I will return to making my own starter cubes for seedlings and perhaps I will have better results and won't have to go to the nursery for 2 tomato plants to add to the few that did grow and pepper plants as none of them grew.

I still have a bit of weeding in the aisles and then they are going to get a good thick layer of wood chips over cardboard to try to win the battle of weeds between the beds.