Repurposed Garden: New Babies

We have new babies in our re-purposed garden!!  Almost two weeks after putting in our final boxes to our re-purposed garden, we have new growth emerging.  Each day I run out to see what is new in the garden and it is always exciting to see actual growth.  I have always been a person who opts to plant plants, that have already been sowed, into my garden.  I had a very bad experience with bare root roses about seven years ago and it scarred me badly.  I had planted three rose plants in pots (my very first attempt at growing pretty much anything) and it ended in rotting death.  That same year I discovered one gallon rose plants that were already leafing out with buds and those plants are still alive and well at our other house.  Each year they have to be hacked down from their 6'-8' heights but they are beautiful.  Lesson learned - roses like ground, not pots.  I have since never been able to kill a rose bush so they have become an old faithful of mine.

Back to my new babies. So, because of the rose lesson, I have always erred on the side of plants instead of seeds for my garden.  This year I am trying to venture into growing plants from seed where possible since it is such a savings in terms of budget.  In our garden I planted the following plants from seed:

• peas
• pumpkin
• mesclun lettuce 
• watermelon (a later addition last weekend along with cayenne pepper plants)

I did grow some winter mesclun lettuce from seed successfully this past year and it tasted great.  Here are the baby mesclun plants that have pushed their way out of the ground this week.

Hello baby lettuce!

They appear small now but I learned this past winter that they will give a wonderful consistent harvest for quite awhile when cut regularly.  This is a mix of lettuces so we will have MANY salads with our dinner for a grand total of $0.99 worth of seeds.  Great value since I have paid about $1.99 for a head of lettuce which usually lasts for about two or three salads.

Baby pea plant

Peas are planted along the same length as the lettuce but they are on the south side of the planter.  This means they will get more sun when the weather heats up.  Since our summers can easily get to 100degreesF, my lettuce needs lots of shade to keep producing. I am planning on having the beans climb up so they shade the lettuce.  I am still looking around the property to find suitable climbing materials to reuse in the garden.

New pumpkin plant

The pumpkins have also started to push up and I was very worried about these little guys.  I had found a packet of seeds tucked away in my desk at work from when we had done some planting at school four years ago.  I really had my doubts that any of these seeds would actually germinate but now I have four plants popping up.  If the rest come up, I will definitely be thinning pumpkins.  On the bright side - we won't have to pay for pumpkins at the pumpkin patch! As a side note, a pumpkin seed was accidentally planted in a small planter at school and today I noticed that a pumpkin plant is growing there for the fourth year in a row.  These are truly hardy plants! 

Our family at the pumpkin patch in 2010. We failed miserably at the corn maze.