Big Garden Day on Cucumber Hill

It finally warmed up enough to feel like a real Memorial Day Weekend, ie: the weekend when it is safe to plant tomatoes. So that's what I did.

Here's how the weekend looked:

I woke up on Saturday morning raring to go, but made myself wait until 10AM when Ms. Knapsack -- a new gardener who was joining me for the day -- arrived. She and I hopped in Murphy's Mom's car and headed to the farm. I ran around like a crazy (excited) person and tried really hard to calm down at least a few times. After about an hour I had $90 worth of stuff including 5 tomato plants, flat leaf parsley, 2 six packs of different types of eggplant, basil, 4 bags of enriching mulch, jalapeno peppers and "dwarf" cucumbers. A few hours after getting home my garden plot went from "just ok" to "kinda awesome." Thanks again to Ms. Knapsack who helped a ton. I'm also sorry that I accidentally planted her tomato seedling thinking it was mine. Wooops! Now I have 6 tomato plants. Hopefully the extra seedlings I gave her will earn me forgiveness.

I've never grown jalapenos or cucumbers before but...I figured I might as well try. I am nervous about the cucumber since I've had cucumber beetles in my plot for the past two years without even growing cucmber, but the fact that it won't need to climb on anything (I believe the word "dwarf" is referring to the size of the plant not the size of the cucumbers) I figured I could give it a shot. I had given up on peppers as well, but my community garden neighbors have said that the "hot" peppers are easier to grow than the ones I've tried before.

Cucumbers like a mound to grow on so I created one, stuck the seedlings in the middle and called it Cucumber Hill. Now I just have to hope that the evil critters that have now consumed 2 lettuce seedlings and 2 kale seedlings leave the cucumber alone... otherwise the hill name will make no sense at all.

I'm pretty sure the evil munchers are bunnies and not cutworms and if they weren't so adorable, work when I am asleep, and FAST I think I might kill them. They are darn cute and speedy AND impossible to catch in the act, so I think they're quite safe.

In terms of layout I kept tomato lane as last year and moved the eggplant to a new locale. It's hard to do much crop rotation with a 100 something square foot garden plot and a layout I already like.

Oh and I got to eat some of my holey (thanks to flea beetles) arugula for dinner tonight. That's my first food from the garden so far this year which made it all the more delicious!