Garden 7-16-11

Here's my garden as of yesterday. I'm still waging war against the bindweed, and the placeholder timbers for the third bed look kind of weird, but I'm mostly happy with it. It is such a process, this gardening thing. Still so hard for me to tell how much room things will take up.

The boxes seem to be holding up well. I reinforced the corners this year by putting a couple of wood screws into each. The veneer is sort of peeling away in places, but these bookcases are living out their second life pretty well as raised beds. The green thing is a chunk of glass that my neighbor got me for watching their cat. There's a rock shop in Custer, South Dakota that sells chunks of slag (? I think that's what it's called) in different colors. This chunk perhaps was with some that became Rolling Rock bottles...

Do not adjust your set. Here are the peas, lettuce (bolting nicely, thank you), one broccoli that just wanted to be leaves and stem, and the carrots. I planted herbs on the left, but they aren't really popping yet. I pulled the broccoli out, and the dog ate just about everything but the leaves. My omnivore. The peas were knocked down by the hail storm, but have bounced back quite well. It's been hot, but they're doing their thing. We'll see for how much longer.

I didn't do too much with annuals this year. Everything I bought ended up in this blue pot, and I like how it looks so far. It got pounded by the hail as well, so it's not quite up to its full potential yet. To the left is one bag of the great-potato-bag-experiment-of-2011. I need to put more soil/compost in the bags, but they are holding up just fine. More glass slag on the corner of the box on the right.