Patio Gardening

In the beginning of the year, as I was waiting for winter to finish up, wishing for spring, I was dreaming of my garden this year. Last year, I finally tossed away my old corner planter. It was rotting out and growing more mushrooms than anything else and it was time. So, I spent the early months of the year planning what kind of planter I'd use to replace it! 

Originally, I had though to do a big long one with upcycled windows for a cover. It would be like a mini-greenhouse for the early months of spring, and also help keep off the rain if I was worried my plants might get drowned later in the summer. Also, I thought I might make a little trough-planter to put my lattice in, so maybe my peas would climb better. I was excited!

It was a lovely idea, but then the world got crazy and the local recycle depot (where I was going to get the old windows to upcycle) closed down until further notice. So, with no windows, it was back to square one. However, as it happened, I did still have a bunch of wood leftover from a different (also put on hold) project. So, I decided instead of a small trough-planter, I'd make a longer, bigger one, using what I had on hand. 

First, make a plan... then, chop some wood!

Next, a little bit of sanding and on to assembly. I got the sides made, legs added and was just about to attach some slats to make a bottom... and my drill gave out. 

Poor old drill, it was a wedding present and it's had some use these last 10+ years ... and as I was drilling the pilot holes in the bottom slats, it just decided that holding onto the bit wasn't that important...

Happily, a friend nearby was willing to lend me her drill, and I was able to extract my bit without trouble and finish what I had started, and even without having to wait too long. (I was very grateful!... waiting is not easy)

Boom! A little behind my originally imagined schedule, but I had a completed planter. Woo!! Now, onto planting. 

Since things here in the Chicago area are pretty thick with CORONA-19, I've been doing a lot of my extracurricular shopping online. One of the drawbacks of patio gardening is that periodically, I have to buy dirt.

Most years I try to reuse my soil or mix in a little new soil to give my old stuff a boost. However, since I had tossed out all my planters last year, I had tossed away all my yucky dirt as well. So, I had to buy all new dirt this year. Which I did online. 

Trouble with online buying is that I accidentally bought the wrong kind of dirt and in the wrong size. Whoops! However, I did some research and figured out ways to make it work. With a little trial and error, I got some dirt into my planters and I was finally ready to put something in them. Happily, by this time, things here in Illinois had started opening up a little more and I was able to go to the garden center and pick out what I wanted (and get a little more dirt too).

Whew! This year's garden seemed a little ill-fortuned.. Historically, I get my garden in and going by mother's day... or Memorial Day at the latest. This year, with all the COVID-craziness and my tools giving me trouble, it took a while longer. But determination won the day and I got my seeds in the dirt on June 1st and the baby plants from the garden center about a week later.  Now things are looking promising!

One of my little nasturtium seeds poking up through the soil.

A whole line of peas, getting ready to climb up the lattice!

I did all flowers and greenery in these horizontal planters this year. Last year Townsend gave me a little petunia for mother's day and it did really well. He was hoping we could do more this year. When I went shopping I couldn't find any petunias, but there were these supertunias at the garden center, so I put them in the middle up on top. They're supposed to trail over the edge, and that should be cool!

And, of course, inpatients on the bottom row.. historically, they've done really well with the more shady level of the planter. 

You can see a nasturtium sprouting in the top level of this 3-tier planter. I'm interested to see how the seeds fare over in this planter (more shallow, more shade, straight potting soil) vs the bigger wood planter (deeper, more sun, a mix of a bunch of different soils). Only time will tell! 

This year, I put in some lettuce in my big, new planter. It's a new one for me, and I bought it on a whim, so we'll see how it does. Only, I forgot where I had planted the sunflower seeds Moon got from preschool... I thought it was in the other corner of the planter, but it's looking like I was wrong..  so we'll see how they do being that close to each other.. haha.

June is the most hopeful time of year - all the plants look fresh.. seeds are starting to sprout.. anything can happen! Here's hoping things continue to look good as the summer progresses.