Changing plans and dead cats.

Ew. So we dug up an area that had been covered by some type of flowering bush and there were some realllllly old cat bones under some rocks. The area was going to become a fairly shallow planting bed anyway (for peas) so we just put the rocks back down and ignored it. There is a good 8 inches above it to work with, and we can add a few by raising the bed with bricks.

On the positive side, it's been a whole lot sunnier, and we actually managed to get most of our stuff in the ground. I still have vague feelings of dread in regards to any of the direct seeded things popping up, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

The Chinese Eggplant seems to like it's container. It looked a little sickly the day after transplant, but it's fine now.

The cherry tomatoes have doubled in size...I don't remember which kind this is, but the plants seem to be thriving.

You can see all the onion starts in the closest bed, then the kohlrabi starts in the middle bed. We're experimenting with the kohlrabi this year. I've always loved it but cabbage relatives did poorly for us last year.

We were given several plastic Tidy Cat buckets from my grandparents, and though they are a little small for tomatoes, they are PERFECT for peppers. After drilling holes in the bottom, we put a layer of flat rocks, then a layer of topsoil, then a layer of topsoil mixed with peat, and finally a layer of potting soil. Since the plants we started bit the dust, I had to use whatever compact peppers the stores had, and I went with two Gypsy peppers and two Yummy Bell peppers. Both are small, sweet varieties that turn orange and should be a lot of fun for the kids to pick and eat off of the plant.

We dug out a small circular bed in an are where we had some space and made it into a pea bed. We'll have a teepee trellis in the center once they sprout.

This is the row of ground-planted tomatoes. We also had to rely on store-bought seedlings for our tomatoes this year, but went with varieties as close to my original seed order as possible. Here we have 2x Mr. Stripey (the clear taste winner from last year), 2x Black Krim (replacing the Black Prince from last year, which was yummy but seemed to split too easily), 1 x pineapple tomato (a kid pick), 2x Better Boy (the red winner from last year), and 2x Early Girl (just to see how early they actually are). We will also be planting sweet basil and purple basil in the same bed, though right now we only have 4 sweet basil plants actually in the ground.