Shopping Day!

Tomorrow is planting day! We're going to be putting in a mix of seeds and nursery plants. Six of us, along with staff member Shelby, went to Home Depot today to pick out plants [and buy seeds for what hasn't arrived yet. :( ]

We also bought the bone meal and peat recommended in response to my question on Yahoo Answers.

I took my proposed garden plan along, but we didn't exactly stick to it. Once we saw live plants, everybody wanted something different!

We now have a bunch of salad greens already started; we can plant those next to the mixed-green seeds, and have a continuous harvest. I forgot that I already had radish seeds, and we got some more. We also got some spinach seed, which is another early crop. And I have plenty of beet seed; beet greens and baby beets can be harvested early. I think that's enough for greens this year; I'll stop fretting for turnips.

We have six tomato plants: two Early Girls; two Sweet 100s; a Sweet Red Cherry; and a beefsteak hybrid, name I forget. I'm sure all the seeds I bought will keep for next year, when we can start our own plans indoors. We got two zucchini plants and two cucumber plants (one burpless and one lemon) so I'm going to save the zucchini and cucumber seeds for next year, too. We got two pumpkin plants, which was unplanned for, but I love it. I still want to plant my seeds for Scallop Sunny Delight summer squash, though! I got nasturtium seeds, since the ones I ordered haven't arrived. Pea plants don't seem to come in starters, so I will be planting seeds for those. And that fills up ALL the space for trailing vines. Somehow we ended up with three pepper plants, plus a package of seeds. I don't know where we're going to put them!

We got some Walla Walla onion sets and half a dozen pansies, which we'll plant interspersed with the pansy seed I got. I'll see if what worked for Jackie French in Australia will work for us in the Pacific Northwest. :)

I was talked down from the 20 strawberry plants I wanted, to 10. According to Shelby, they have babies. :) I wanted six thyme plants among them; we got two. But they'll probably spread, too!

We got the lavender, rosemary, and sage that we had planned for the herb bed, plus oregano and peppermint. I know we've got at least two sage plants (two different kinds) but I'm not sure how many of the others we have. I think we need more; Shelby and Jean think those will spread to fill in the space we've got.

Shelby insisted on getting some creeping myrtle for "ground cover." I researched it after I got home; it will be pretty, but it's an invasive plant, and unlike the myrtle bush that it is not at all related to, it is toxic. I feel very strongly about not having any toxic plants around the garden, so I am going to urge Shelby to take the creepy myrtle home.

We got lots of marigolds. None of them seem to be the gem marigolds or the french marigolds that I wanted to plant. (Also among the seeds that never arrived!) We also got a nice big cosmos, which I hadn't planned for but fell in love with when I saw it. (It's purple.)

I wish I'd taken the camera along! I will definitely be taking pictures tomorow, though.

See you then!