Notes From a Novice Gardener: Sorting through a June mess

Credit: Melissa Fraser

I went away for a week or so, and when I got home someone else’s hard work had paid off. Our garden had bloomed. These pictures are of the area in the garden that we didn’t touch, which had been tended by the previous tenant. In a simple and beautiful way everything grew on its own.  

As for the part of the garden that we’ve had our hand in…

Like any good, caring parent seeing their child—or tomato plant, in this case—out into the world, we wanted to make sure the conditions were right and that our plants were good and strong.

With temperatures reaching about 25 degrees last week, and the frost having come and gone a while ago, it seemed the time to get the fellows outside. So, I grabbed my gardening tools—which consist of a shovel, a fork and a spoon—and I headed out to the vegetable patch to see just what I would be dealing with.

It was a mess. There’s a whole whack of different green things sprouting up, most of which I assume I don’t want in a vegetable patch. I went back inside to take another look at what we had started early and what type of space I would need outside.

Again, it was a mess. We had planted tomatoes, bell peppers, verbena and some herbs. My roommate had been replanting them to keep them growing, but lost the handy labels we made in the beginning. Nothing looks like it’s final product yet so I’m completely lost. And, with my roommate on a one-month vacation, figuring out what else has been planted could be hopeless.

I’ve devised a plan that I’ll undertake in the next week.

1)    Dig up everything in the vegetable patch area.
2)    Plant seeds in the vegetable garden: peas, carrots, beans
3)    Buy some containers.
4)    Take the plants from inside the house and plant like ones together in the containers.

If you have any suggestions please let me know. I have a feeling I have this all wrong.