Progress in the Vegetable Bed

We started the day off by making a quick trip down to Cottage Grove. I wanted to stop by The Bookmine, a funky little bookstore + more located in the heart of the old town district. Besides selling books, it is also a retail outlet for Log House Plants. I was hoping to pick-up the Morning Glory varieties that I wanted for my garden this year. Unfortunately, with the super warm weather Saturday, they had sold out of a lot of stock by the time we arrived Sunday. Still, as you can see, a few things jumped into my car. I picked up Morning Glory "Flying Saucer", "Milky Way", "Pearly Gate" and two "Grandpa Ott". I also couldn't resist trying one of their new Mighty Mato grafted tomato plants. I chose a "Black Krim" since it is a variety that has done well for me in the past. My new plant has been grafted onto stock of a different tomato variety that promotes healthy traits and rapid growth. It will be fun to see how this grafted plant grows compared to the "regular" ones that I have grown in past years.

Once I got back to the house I started working on my vegetable bed. I finally got all of the tomatoes planted. I also put into place the two towers that I will grow morning glories on added color and interest. I got out my 4 new grow bags and put them into place. I have two large bags which I want to grow Sweet Potatoes in and two smaller grow bags for my Pepper plants. This will be another good experiment to see how the plants do in this new environment, compared to getting planted right into the ground. Lastly, I bought three bamboo hoops and some more remay cover and covered one end of my Onions. The songbirds are just nibbling the "Red Bull" Onions at that end of the row to death. I thought with a few weeks under protected cover, they might have a chance to rebound.

Here is one of my new towers for the Morning Glories and my four new grow bags. I still need to add more soil to the bags and then they will be ready to plant.

Here are my protected onions. It's not too pretty but it should do the trick. Then in two or three weeks they should be big enough that I can remove the remay cover.

All day while I worked in the garden I had the company of Evening Grosbeaks at two of the feeders. They were so late arriving this year, so we are especially thrilled to have them back with us now.

And this guy was absolutely no help at all with my gardening projects! He was happy to nap the day away beside me, soaking up the heat from the concrete. At least he was leaving all of the birds alone.