Garden Prep, 2016 - The Adventure Begins

Come over I said. We'll do some gardening, I said. What I meant was, help me clean up a winter's worth of debris from my yard and deck. This wasn't gardening, this was yard maintenance. And despite the fact that it would have been far more fun (and far less back-breaking) to tour some Civil War Battlefield, my parents came over and helped me get ready for Garden 2016, Ben Tries Again.

That's not to say that we didn't squeeze in a little planting while doing bed-preparation and such. My Mom planted some pretty pansy's and I seeded the X-Garden for yet another year of experimentation. My Dad dubbed the X-Garden the Evolution Garden, as we'll see which seeds are fittest to survive. We got a nice rain last night and today so hopefully everything's off to a reasonable start.

We still need the dreaded trip to Home Depot to pick up veggies and herbs to planted in the raised beds. But at least the beds are ready to go, so hopefully that process won't be too painful. I keep stressing to myself that this isn't a one-day activity. Baby steps is the way to go.

One of the lessons I learned from last year's X-Garden was that I needed to be far more careful about how I labeled the seeds. My casual attempts to keep track of what got planted where, failed almost immediately. Not this year! I neatly marked off the various zones and I've documented them below. Again, slowly but surely, I'm figuring this out.

And here's the seed layout:

(With my back to the house, facing our rear property line)

(Rear property line)
Zinnias
Wando Peas	Borage
Heirloom Orach	Ground Cherry / Camellia Sinensis (Tea)
Heirloom Purslane	Black Henbane
Heirloom Cabbage Danish Ballhead	Common Milkweed
Bunching Onion Red Welsh	Peppermint
(Front property line)

(Rear property line)
Heirloom Cabbage Danish Ballhead	Bunching Onion Red Welsh	Wando Peas
(Front property line)