So the cherry tomato plants aren’t doing so well. The leaves are sort of tiny and mottled and despite my best attempts I couldn’t get good growth out of them. I’m going to continue to nurse them and see how far they go, but at this point, they’re on life support. I bought two new cherry tomato plants and this morning planted them. I figured since they were already outdoors they didn’t need to be hardened too much longer. The stems grew a little crooked, but they’re green and leafy. Maybe i’ll get a salad out of it yet.

Marigolds in the back, cherries along my makeshift bamboo trellis, roma plants next and sweet basil plants in the foreground.

In the 2nd veggie patch, my one cucumber seedling is doing well. The lettuce and the carrots have come up  and need to be thinned.  I may take the spinach out and plant a pepper plant instead. I’m not that big of a fan of spinach anyway.

Tomatoes went into their individual pots last week. I picked 3 of the Romas and 2 of the cherries. I think these should be enough for the veggie patch I plotted out for them.

I named the romas after my sister’s family. The cherry tomatoes are named for me and my boyfriend.

The cherry tomatoes (Sweet 100), are in recycled plastic pots from the herb plants I bought earlier.

Sometime this week, the cucumbers, lettuces and carrots are going into the ground. I would have done it today but it was really cold out.

From my flickr page, taken today…

Disclaimer: I am a humungous gardening noob.  Feel free to point and laugh, but please keep in mind i ain’t no expert.

Cherries and Roma Tomatoes seeded in the last week of April:

The seed beds are recycled containers with holes cut out on the bottom for drainage. I wrapped them up with plastic wrap. Within a couple of days, the seeds began to sprout. Romas are in the rectangular tray, and cherries are in the sour cream tub.

Seedlings, beginning of week 3:

I diligently thinned the sprouts and will probably do more thinning. I don’t think that every sprout will get planted. I know they’re a little leggy. I went away last weekend and didn’t anticipate they’d come up so soon so I hadn’t given them ample lighting. I have a desk lamp with a plant bulb over them now. I rotate the dishes when I can so they don’t lean to the light.

The true leaves are coming in. I’ll keep watching them and when the leaves are a bit more established I’ll re-pot selected plants in larger containers (or all the plants, we’ll see how many recyclables I can turn into pots in the next few days).

The plan:

I’ve been spending a lot of time in my backyard lately, and a bit in the front. This is what I’ve accomplished so far:

• manually removed wild violets and other weeds from half the lawn
• turned, tilled, raked the soil, amended it with gardening soil
• plotted out where the veggie patches will end up
• aerated and mowed the remaining grass in the backyard
• mowed the grass in the front yard
• cleaned up the front garden and weeded a little
• seeded lawn with an eco-friendly type of grass (needs little watering)
• overseeded the remaining lawn with same grass
• more weeding! /argh
• cleaned up a couple more gardening patches

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Going through my backyard, I found these tiny heads poking up from beneath the dried leaves and old mulch from last year. These were the ferns I planted in this corner of my garden that I didn’t think survived because I underwatered them. But it looks like they want to live. Now I have to decide if I want to keep them or plant a bush there instead. I also found baby hostas and a Japanese ferns. The woodruff I planted last year is also coming in nicely… a bit messy, but it’s growing. Russian sage that I thought had just dried out is budding again and little leaves have sprouted around the base. It also looks like echinacea, lavendar and the crazy daisies have survived too.

The lawn renovation is coming along. Because i’m too cheap to rent proper power equipment, I’m doing this on my own, bit by bit. The boyfriend was in town with me this weekend, so he helped me with a Home Depot trip to buy soil and various seeds. I’m a little determined to grow myself a small vegetable patch this year, starting with herbs, lettuce and tomatoes. We’ll see how that works out. This could end in tears… or pasta sauce.

They seem sweet and pretty and innocent. Actually, right now they’re my enemy. At least one of them. These wild violets are one of the new unwanted invaders to my back yard. They crept in over the years and this spring it looks like they’ve taken almost half the yard.

I could pay some lawn care company hundreds of dollars to take care of this. But as most know, I’ve already spent hundreds of dollars on a new bike (which I still love!). So I have to do this as economically as possible. I have garden tools, organic non-selective herbicide (key ingredient being acetic acid, aka vinegar) and time. Every day, I’m going to conquer the violets patch by patch by getting on my knees and clawing those fuckers out of the ground, pulling them up as much as I could by their veiny little roots. After that, I will liberally use the herbicide to kill any stragglers and possibly new growth. I’m also going to ruthlessly dig up dandelions and knotweed. I’ll wait a week or so, then till in new soil which I will then seed with grass. I will water the seeded areas methodically, twice a day every day until they are established. Even if I don’t have the prettiest wildflower garden, at least I’ll have a lawn again.

Maybe I’ll even like gardening again.

Crocuses popped up in my derelict front yard this morning.

This is promising.