WEEKEND WARRIOR

How excited was I to have 2 days of nice weather forecast for the weekend and no social engagements on the calendar?!  I just didn't count on VPH catching a bad cold on Thursday.  My heavy-lifting help-mate was not available all weekend.  I had to haul all the heavy bags of soil around to get those annuals into pots by myself!

I did try to make the huge ceramic pots a little lighter (and save potting soil) by turning a plastic pot upside down inside each of them.  Apparently the annual flowers don't really need all that space for their roots.  If I were planting perennials in these pots, I wouldn't have done this:

Planter #1 which isn't quite doing its job of hiding the ick under our front steps:

I decided that I should keep some record of what I'm planting in each container.  In addition to the Gerber daisy and some leftover petunias this one has:

Container #2 (and my favorite):

This one has a Gerber daisy and:

Dave gave me a call on Saturday morning and said the dahlia roots were ready for pick-up.  I ran out and bought 5 new containers to add to the 3 appropriately sized pots that I had on hand and headed over to Dave and Dottie's house.  I neglected to bring my camera with me, so I don't have any photos of their fantastic garden for you, only pots of dirt with dahlia roots planted in my driveway (nor have I made it back to Kathy's beautiful garden yet -- too much to do in mine!).  I'm not supposed to water these dahlias until they sprout:

Dave suggested that I keep the two dahlias that had already sprouted out of the direct sun for a few days, so this guy is tucked under a chair:

And this one is under a bench:

These planters from IKEA (last year, don't know if they still carry them) will be the new home of my beans in a week or so:

I threw the old white Rubbermaid patio storage bench on Freecycle Saturday mid-day and it was picked up within 60 minutes.  It just didn't do the job I wanted it to, not waterproof, not insect proof, and not comfortable to sit on -- and frankly, it was ugly.  Taking its spot in the center of the vegetable garden are 2 new huge containers that will be home to my zucchini plants.  To the right and left of them along the fence will be the wooden troughs for the Kentucky Wonder beans (you can see the one on the right peeking out) and I'll throw netting over the fence again for them to climb.  In the empty spots between the stumps and the trellis planter on the right I'll put smaller pots with a few Royal Purple bush beans.  Note that the lawn is filling in a little:

The second lettuce planting:

Sweet 100 cherry tomato plant (in Fafard potting soil and Bradfield Organic tasty tomato & veggie fertilizer):

Husky Cherry Red (I'm using the same prep as above for all the veggies):

The planter table all done up.  I'm looking forward to everything filling out.  It looked so thin in spots that I stuck the leftover petunias in there, blue, purple and pink.  I'm not entirely certain that I'm happy with how this turned out:

I photographed all the labels from the plants in the table, but my camera ate about 30 photos (or it was operator error downloading Sunday evening -- I'm tired, give me a break) and I had already thrown the labels out, so I'm going to have to take a trip to the nursery to remind myself of what I planted.  Here's a shot that kind of shows how tall the peas are getting:

As does this one:

I put zinnia seed in the large pot in the front on Sunday.  The 2 lettuces are on the table and the rest of the pots are herbs that overwintered (with varying degrees of success).  I'm hoping that they start growing more quickly or my belated Mother's Day trip to the nursery is going to net 100% herb seedlings:

In the lost photos I showed how I put recycled screening from the destroyed gazebo into the bottom of the herb barrel, anchored it with some potting soil and then layered empty 2 liter seltzer bottles and Coke Zero cans in the bottom.  I did that to keep the barrel at a weight where we can move it if we need to and to reduce the amount of potting soil needed for the barrel by half.  So it only took 2/3 of a 2 cubic foot bag of potting soil.  I am dying to get some herbs in there:

I'm not sure if this one is going to work...I took the forsythia branches that I forced inside this spring and stuck them in a pot of dirt.  Supposedly they'll take root.  Maybe this time next year I'll have a new bush to plant:

The sweet peas are coming along.  They're definitely leaning in the direction of the sun.  I think I'm going to end up with sweet peas only on the front half of the trellis:

I was lamenting that only 3 of the morning glories have come up when lo and behold I have a fourth(in the center):

The wildflower patch is looking better.  They are actually some little seedlings coming up now if you bend over and look closely, however I was too tired to do that for you:

That mystery plant is blooming:

Can anyone identify this one for me:

I almost finished everything that I had planned for the weekend.  I didn't get to putting together the hanging baskets of annuals for the shady side of the house, though I did find time to pick up 4 matching hanging baskets and 2 needed hanging brackets. 

My zucchini and cucumber seedlings are showing signs of developing true leaves (another photo lost) so they'll be ready to transplant soon.  I saw the first Red Peter pepper seedlings on Sunday -- woohoo!  I'm still a little nervous about leaving tomato plants out overnight outside of the greenhouse, but the lowest overnight temperature in the forecast over the next 10 days is 44 tomorrow night.  Wednesday is supposed to be beautiful.  Maybe I'll take a vacation day and garden.

I've placed a to do list on my sidebar (in part to amuse VPH who says I make lists for everything).  What's on yours?

Comments

[Kris at Blithewold]

Hi Heather - I love an i.d. question! I think your mystery is Honesty/Money plant/Silver dollars (Lunaria annua). I've got it in my yard too. It makes pretty papery coin sized seeds that scatter ev-ery-where! Is that your walmart greenhouse in the pictures? It's bigger than I thought it would be.

[Heather's Garden]

Kris -- I think you're right! One would hope that when it went to seed I would have figured it out, lol. I don't remember seeing it in either of the wildflower seed mixes that I threw down last year, but there must have been a lot because I've got a bunch of them. I'm kind of excited for the seeds to come. The wildflower patch is pretty isolated from everything else in the garden by the patio so I'm not too worried about scatter.

No, the grey structures in this post are my pop-up sheds, which are quite a bit larger than the greenhouse. The greenhouse is featured pretty prominently in the previous post though, take a look, it's larger than I thought it would be http://heathersgarden.typepad.com/heathers_garden/2008/05/i-may-have-a-pl.html.

[Layanee]

I am impressed with all you got done this weekend and now another is looming! Love your containers! Aren't they gratifying? I have been picking up plants for my containers but some of them are tender so another week or so before I plant. Full moon on the 20th! Right after that for me.