Sprouts, I Have Them

Last year I had a small garden. Just a couple of peppers, 8 or 9 tomatoes, some basil, and a cantaloupe. This year, the Cud household is going crazy. Last year, I had a couple of seed packs of peppers and flowers I didn't even use. This year, I bought enough seeds to need 3 coffee cans to hold them all. One is all flowers, one is viney plants: watermelon, peas, beans, pumpkins, etc. The other one is the rest of the vegetables and some herbs. I have about a dozen kinds of tomatoes, a little less peppers. Tons of different melons and squashes.

This is going to be one huge garden. I had to change the basic plan a couple of times. I had it laid out in about a dozen 6 by 4 foot beds, all in nice neat rows. Then I looked at the paper and realized it looked like a little graveyard. All it needed was headstones. So I ended up flipping the beds 90 degrees and changing the width of the paths. Now it looks like four long beds, 4 foot wide and who knows how long. They keep getting longer. The estimated size is about 25 by 40 or so.

The thing is, the garden really is a graveyard. We buried Buddy right in the middle of the flat part of the yard. The best place for a garden. So the garden is going to be right over Buddy. It doesn't bother me. He's probably just bones by now, but just so nobody feels weird 'eating' Buddy I'm planting the pumpkins over him. I guess we're growing Bumpkins. Next year I'm going to plant a bunch of flowers there. Maybe foxglove. Something pretty that will attract insects.

We planted a bunch of tomato and pepper seeds and they're already up. At least part of them. The peppers aren't doing much, but the tomatoes a popping up more every day. I also have onion sprouts. None of the flowers I planted came up yet. I planted some impatiens and some marigolds. Part of the reason the garden is ending up this big is I want to plant a whole lot of flowers in with the vegetables. Plus I'm going to plant a great big asparagus bed. I have seeds for a fancy pants French heirloom asparagus. I just don't know where I want to plant it. Everything else I can throw where ever I want but the asparagus needs it's own place. A special place. A big place.

It's just a shame the back yard is still covered in grass. The garden last year was only about 6 by 10 feet. At least that's a start. The middle of the garden is going to be all vines. Cantaloupes, watermelons, all kinds of squashes. I have a melon from Thailand that's supposed to taste like pineapple and papaya or something. It's going to be the best garden ever. Considering I've had a total of 2 so far, one last year and one at the other house that got flooded in 93, being the best ever isn't that hard. The Man wants to buy a huge truck load of dirt and spread it out instead of tilling everything. I read a book that said you could just scalp your lawn then cover it with newspaper and mulch and have an instant garden, no tilling involved. That sounds good to me, but The Man insists you have to till.

It might not make any difference because it's rained so much the people who are supposed to sell us the topsoil can't dig it up. We might end up going to the nursery and buying a ton of huge bales of potting soil and tilling it in. The Man is convinced our soil is worthless. Too much clay. The only reason I really want the topsoil delivery is the left part of the garden will either have a slope, or the garden will have to bend toward the house. Sort of a rainbow shaped garden. That would ruin the perfect garden I have on paper.