Garden goodness

Happy Wednesday!  I'm so glad you came by today.  I want to talk about gardening today.  Because, well, there's nothing quite like getting dirty, is there?

Now, I have to confess.  I do not have a yard.  Or a garden of my own.  I have a windowsill, with a very functional plant ledge that A made for me out of spare lumber.  We didn't even stain/seal it.  Right now I have some sad looking sage and a baby aloe plant hangin' out on the ledge.  But this isn't the gardening y'all should care about.  My friend Viv (yes, the same one who owns my favorite little shop) has the very best yard/garden I have ever seen.  She is gracious enough to let me help her tend it, in exchange for enjoying the peace of her yard and all of its bounty.

My little ledge

Miss Viv over by the main vegetable garden

Last year, she was busy getting married.  She decided to get married in her back yard, and that we should re-landscape the whole thing.  It took up lots of time, and our veggies were not what we had hoped.  But this year, Viv and I have big plans for this garden.

In case you are wondering, the weather has been unseasonably warm in Northern Colorado this year.  We are already seeing the Crocuses and the Hyacinths, and our roses are even starting to green up!  If you have perennials, you should probably go check to see which ones are saying hello to you.  We always start with a huge garden clean-up.  Despite our best efforts to do a lot of this in the fall, there always seems to be so much more to do come early spring.  We pulled out the remaining sunflowers.  Cut down the pompous grass.  Ripped out the raspberry bushes that curiously will not bear fruit.  Found out that (surprise!) the strawberries are already coming in.

We also did some planting.  Last year, we started our lettuce on the spring equinox, and had a great crop.  Even though the first day of spring was yesterday, we decided to go for it anyway.  We decided that we would do our early lettuce in the raised bed planter A built for Viv last spring, since it has the best soil, and is the easiest to work. 

A stinky, composted mess

We added some leaves that had been decomposing in one of the two ponds over the winter to the soil before we turned it.  If you have a weak stomach for smells, get someone else to do this step for you, or use a commercial compost/fertilizer.

Pinwheels!

Then the fun part began!  We decided to break up the bed into 7 different zones, and planted a different kind of lettuce in each zone.  We marked each zone with a cut pinwheel tag, so we would know what's supposed to be growing where.  And then for even more fun, we planted a row of spring onions that bisects the entire bed.  Sometimes we get a little carried away on garden days.

We're tagging all of our plants with pinwheels this year, just to make everything more cheerful.  How do you tag your plants if you garden?  Or do you just scatter seeds and wait to see what pops up where?  Do you have plants already popping out of the ground?