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Rainy Day

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It is raining this morning so I can't work in the yard. That means I have some time to post pictures of the work we've done in the past 2 weeks. Last week we worked on getting rid of the grass between the sidewalk and the street. In the small section we planted some native sedum. In the larger section we just put down cardboard and covered it with leaf mulch. We will plant some sedum there in the fall of next spring. We also planted pineapple sage, sunflowers, and marigolds in the some of the raised beds. We also put some marigolds by the tomatoes. My wife had bought the sunflower and marigold seeds for an Earth Day project at school and didn't want them to go to waste. We found a little snake friend in our compost bin. The dogwood tree that we planted last year is just about done blooming. The front hostas are starting to come up as well. On Saturday, I tilled parts of the side yard so that we could plant cucumbers, corn, and beans. This used up mo
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Planting and transplanting

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My wife bought some new plants and we had some other plants that need transplanting so that's what we worked on this morning. In the cottage garden, we planted Barbara's Buttons (circled in red) and Closed Gentian (circled in white). We moved one hydrangea from the north side of the house and planted it in the back yard. We also planted a hydrangea that we bought at Schnucks. There was a group of three hydrangeas on the north side of the house where I separated one and planted it it nearby. We also planted some blue bells and celandine poppies.
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Planting pizza

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We planted tomatoes on Friday. There were several varieties including some Roma tomatoes that I am hoping to make into sauce. We also planted some seeds that we got for free. We also planted some herbs in the "pizza garden". We transplanted an oregano from another bed and also planted marjoram, basil, and rosemary. We already had a bed with garlic in it.
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Starting peppers indoors

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I planted some jalapeño peppers seeds inside to get them started. I will move them outside once the weather warms up. I got fewer seedling than I wanted so I planted some more seeds on Sunday.
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Getting rid of the winter creeper

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Years ago someone planted winter creeper (euonymus) in our backyard as a ground cover. I have been neglecting and it has been spreading. This year, we are trying to get rid of it. Here's some pictures of some of the work that I did last Friday.
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The rest of the yard

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Here's some photos of whats going on in the rest of the yard today.
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Origin Story

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Last year, we decided to convert our side yard into a vegetable garden. The kids used to play there but they are too old to play in the yard now. This is what it looked like last September. A bunch of grass is kind of wasteful but I did my part by not watering it or fertilizing it. In February, I started breaking ground (literally) on the new garden. This took a while to do. Breaking up the grass is a lot of work even with the tiller. The soil in this part of our yard is not very good. It has a lot of clay in it. I added leaf mulch to it to try and improve it. On Saturday, We planted the first bed. It has dinosaur kale, bok choy, spinach, lettuce, beets, radishes, and carrots. Yesterday we added a second bed with cauliflower, kohlrabi, dill, onions, and potatoes. I've not had much luck with potatoes in the past. I only planted these because we had some potatoes that started sprouting and I figured I had nothing to lose. Today we added 6 strawberry plants.   The p
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