Garden is almost in

We have been busy for the last two weekends. A number of planters have been filled and set up for this growing season. The only problem we have had is the squirrels got into my daughter's Carrots and Onions. We have a neighbor that I suspect is feeding them and they are now using my pots to dig holes and deposit the peanuts into. So far I have lost four pots (2 carrots and 2 onions). Emily is quite upset that all of her work was lost, but, we can redo the planting again.

It looks like I will be doing the two things that I find discourages squirrels. The first is to dust the pots and plants with powered chili pepper (or cayenne). The second thing is to mix vaseline with a hot sauce (the hotter the better) and put a few dabs on their favourite entry points into the yard. They are both non-toxic, but, effective for 1-2 weeks. This weekend we plan to finish off the planting and I will be drawing up the layouts and pictures of the start of the year.

So far:

• Cherry Tomato (lost that battle with my wife and daughter)
• Rosemary
• Sage
• Lavender
• Oregano
• Sweet Peppers
• Geraniums

The planting season has started.

If the weather holds up we will be starting the planting of our garden this weekend. Emily will be doing up several containers with carrots and onions. It is a bit early, but, I have several packages of carrots and onions so I won't be upset if they don't germinate.

We have started to clean up the containers after the long winter and cut back the sedum and savoury and then added more soil to the top of each container. Several containers have soil three years old so I will be going through them and using them to top dress the lawn area and refill with fresh soil (high in peat moss this time).

One of the plants that may be put in this year is dill. I grew it several years ago and it does do well in planters and was over 2 meters in height before I harvested the seed. Jane picked up several packages of snap dragon seeds and we will be putting those along the house wall and outside fence area where there is a bit of soil to cover up the area that is not covered by the concrete pavers.

When I have finished the weekend plantings I will udpate the diagram showing what is planted where.

2007 Garden Layout

Updated: 2007/03/18

We have started out layout of the garden this year. I am trying to use OpenOffice draw to do the layout and it is quite the learning experience. Once I got the hang of the basics it is quite easy to sketch out the yard and what I want to put where. We know that we want geraniums (1) on the south fence line so I dropped in seven objects on the fence. I drew in the rough sizes and positions of the various objects where we cannot put plants due to doors, gates, window wells etc. in purple. As we revise the plan I will update this blog with the decisions we made for our garden. I exported the document to JPG format, but, if anyone is interested I can make the OpenOffice document available for downloading.


2007/02/18 - We have made a few more decisions on the plants and the location of a few of the planters even though they don't have anything in them yet. I also worked a bit more on the scale and location of items.

Plants:
(1) Geraniums - 50x15 cm planter, quantity of 3 plants per planter.
(2) Rosemary - round planter, 50cm diameter, quantity of three.
(3) Sedum - 60x60 cm planter.
(4) Winter Savoury - 60x60 cm planter.

Fixtures:
(A) Sundial.