It’s been a couple of weeks since I planted, so we’re beginning to see growth in both the community garden and at our home. This year, I’m taking a “throw everything against the wall and see what sticks” approach, and I don’t expect every crop to be bountiful. I just hope the yard looks nice and we are able to get most of the vegetables out of the ground and into our kitchen.

Our home: The green beans are growing like crazy. I planted them in a weird spot in our yard since it’s the only space we had left. They get tons of sun, but look a little funny since I scattered the seeds in between our tomato plants. That’ll make building another fence tricky, but I’m taking a stab at it today. The tomatoes are looking good and appear to be healthy.

Our wildflowers… Where do I start? It looks like the flower beds in our front yard have been invaded by millions of weeds, but they’re actually tons of seedlings. I’ll have to thin them out, but I’m encouraged they’re growing so well.

The dahlias are doing great and their green foliage has appeared, but two of the tubers are struggling. One looks like an animal may have eaten the top of the plant, and the other hasn’t emerged from the ground. Both of these are somewhat shaded areas with large trees surrounding, so competing roots or poor conditions could be the culprits.

 

The nasturtiums are also up, and I’m pretty sure something ate our sunflower seeds before they had a chance to grow. They’re nowhere to be found, even when I dig in the soil. If my green bean fence shields the area, I might pick up another sunflower seed packet and try again.

Ok… Onto our community plot. The fence is up! It’s not the best fence in the world, but it was easy to install, cost effective, and it works. When I went shopping for materials, I realized my best options were the green plastic (gasp… I used plastic) fencing seen in the picture below or some heavy duty metal wire. I bought the metal wire last year, but find it very difficult to work with. It is hard to bend, takes forever to cut, and has sharp edges. No thanks. After noticing many other gardeners using the plastic fencing, I took their lead and decided to do the same. I purchased eight wooden stakes from Home Depot along with two rolls of the garden fencing and was on my way.

My husband was nice enough to hammer the stakes into the ground for me. We put one on each corner and one on each side to keep the fence somewhat taught. After digging a little trench and burying the fence a few inches deep, I secured everything with green twist ties so we can easily get in and out.

The seeds are all starting to germinate in the garden. The first vegetable I noticed was the cucumber which showed up in a matter of days. We also have snap peas, watermelons, zucchini, squash, and a few green beans. Things are still emerging, and I hope they push their way through in the next week. It’s interesting to compare the growth rate of the green beans in both gardens- they are thriving at our house, but are barely sprouting in the community garden. Although everything seems to be doing pretty well early in the season, I’ll admit it’s a bit discouraging to be one of the only people to start the majority of our garden from seeds. I’m second guessing myself, thinking I should have bought seedling plants instead. I guess we’ll just have to be a bit more patient and hope for the best!