Green Goodness

We've had a fairly productive last month or so in the yard. The first project has been to give the side yard a makeover and get our veggie garden going. We'd been drenching the weeds with chemicals so they'd die and quit growing. Being that we were too lazy to dig it all up, we decided to go the easy route and just cover the mess up with weed barrier. On top, we placed three raised planters and surrounded them with bark. I'm pretty happy with the results....so long as Kaiser doesn't die from wood indigestion. This doggie likes to eat bark as much as he does his own mulberry filled poo --> a lot I tell ya!!

This pretty much shows what we did:

Some of you may be interested in the planters we bought. They are supposedly "self-watering" although we're yet to be convinced of their effectiveness. I'm leaning toward saying they don't self-water. I also believe that the extra warm and dry San Diego climate may play a factor... Regardless, I think they look really nice so be it as they may. I'll keep you all posted on that aspect. Otherwise, I thought they were a synch to put together and are a perfect size for square-foot gardening when you don't have a ton of space, or time to invest in the process. For more info, you can visit this site and check out the planters, as well as all sorts of other fun gardening goodies.

In planter #1 we have 3 different types of tomato plants (2 that were already bigger and three tiny ones that I hope won't outgrow the space). We also included 1 plant each root onion, jalapeno and habanero. Everything has already grown a lot in just a couple of weeks:

And see the tomatoes?!!! Yay!

Planter #2 remains empty, as does #3.

The hydroponics system is up and running for the most part but my seed starters haven't quite developed yet. I had to start over with them...I suck at that part.

This past weekend was a lot of fun cause I did a ton or work on the raised planter by the orange tree. This is what you see from the kitchen so I was eager to get it done. The bush looking plant in the middle of the left side is a dwarf Mexican lime tree. *Note to self - be mature, Katie. No need to chuckle every time you say bush* Other than some daylilies and gardenias, I couldn't even tell you what the rest of the stuff is. Oh, but there are a couple plumeria plants to keep in pots by the house. Ian loves those cause he's a woman like that. So obviously, a couple things still need to be put in the ground but we're getting there!

My method to garden shopping you ask? Go to the "sunny" plants and pick pretty ones since they will be in the sun, duh. I figure I'll just wait and see what lives and what dies and plant a bunch more living stuff where the dead stuff ends up. What? You don't think that's scientific enough? Eh, whatever. I did learn the difference between annuals and perennials though...so I at least KNOW the tiny pretty flowers around the border will die off and need to be replaced next year. The little suckers only took two seconds to plant though...that's right, LITERALLY TWO SECONDS, got that?