soaphouse's Blog

Plans Coming Together!
Apr 18, 2008 | 6:19 AM PST
Tags: raised bed , vegetable garden , veggie , tomato , eggplant , companion planting , seeds , last frost , plan , hostas

I have had a wonderful couple of days in the garden! All the planning that I did over the winter months is starting to come together and since our last frost date has come and gone (April15), I got to start planting!!!! HOORAY!

First thing I did was put in all the annual flower seeds for the bed I laid out around the porch:

It doesn't look like much now, but soon it will have (from back to front) Sweet Pea Vine, 2 Varieties of Sunflowers, Bells of Ireland, Nemophila: Baby Blue Eyes and Sweet Alyssum.

I also had a great helper:

Then, when hubby got home he was kind enough to help me plant and divide all my new hostas! (Its a bit hard to bend over these days at 9 mo preggers) HAH!

We divided up and planted a few different varieties of hostas and put some under the saucer magnolia:

And the rest in the evolving azalea shade bed:

I also moved a couple of hostas from the hydrangea bed over to the azalea bed. This will make for a nice collection and I think they will fill in very nicely. They were all actually easier to divide than I thought and I was able to save a lot of money that way!

But, perhaps the most exciting part of the afternoon was installing the veggie bed plan! Here is a pict of the master companion planting plan:

And the results:

I know, doesn't look like much...I started everything from seeds except the tomatoes, eggplants, bee balm, peppers, and strawberries. I am super excited to see how all of this comes together! Hope the companion system proves to be effective. The only thing that didn't get planted yet are the sweet potatoes. Still waiting on those in the mail. They won't ship them until after May 15th....apparently they only like REALLY warm soil.

The plants that I purchased are as follows:

Tomatoes: Yellow Pear, Husky Cherry Red, and Better Boy

Eggplant
: Black Beauty and Ichiban

Pepp
ers: Mexibell, Gypsy, and Yellow Bell

Strawbe
rries: Quinalt

All of the varieties of seeds can be seen by looking at a previous post and clicking here. I also added a sweet basil plant and Dark Opal Purple Basil to that as well as okra, but I forgot to jot down its variety :(

We finished up just as the sun was setting and I tell ya, it felt SO good! Especially to have this done before I have the baby :)

Now we will just water and wait: