I took a risk as the weather ahead looks warm and bought 9 Shishito Peppers at Home Depot yesterday. I planted them today and need to get three more. I’ll need 4 more pepper plants to fill the second center bed. I think I’ll get either Melrose or Gypsy peppers.

I also planted Heirloom Arugula (Roquette) in the other half of the planter nearest the cucumbers. The other half of that planter has Pak Choi. In the middle bed, I planted two 2-foot rows of Burpee Cherry Giant Radishes and a single 2-foot row of Burpee Heirloom Crimson Giant radishes. If they won’t grow in the great soil in these planters, I give up.

I turned on the front spigot and tested the new watering system in the front. My life is simpler. There is a cloud of paper wasps surveying the front porch already. Time to break out the WD-40.

Since I was trying to get at least one project completely finished, I decided to go to the Jewel on Palatine Rd. and see if they had seed geraniums. They did and I was ecstatic, and I bought 40 at $1.98 each, which is the same price that they have been for the past couple of years. I managed to get all of the containers in the front yard planted and the porch cleaned. It is now ready for summer nights. Geraniums didn’t go in until mid-May last year and May 7, in 2023.

He even brought his own ladder!

One of my noted problems with the garden the past few years is that I am not very good at watering when needed. This is a problem with my front yard planters, also. The root of the problem is that it is a royal pain. To turn the water on in the front yard, I have to crawl between the porch post and wall and then step down to reach the spigot. The hose is a pain to unreel. For the back garden, I had to drag out the heavy rubber hose into the garden, do my watering and then drag it back to the house. Not a quick process. And my hands would be black from the oxidized rubber coming off the hose.

This year I bought three hose racks with spigots. In the front I’ll install the rack directly opposite the front door at the end of the lilacs. I’ll run a heavy rubber hose to the front spigot. I have a 25-foot light flexible hose on the rack, and I’ll leave the spigot on the house on and turn the water on and off at the rack.

In the back, I’ll have one rack in the garden, and the otherwhere the existing hose rack is. I have a splitter at the outside spigot and have rubber hoses going to each rack. There will be a 50-foot light flexible hose on each rack. Again, as in the front, I’ll leave the house spigot on and control the water at the new racks.

Thanks to my new planters I am on schedule with my spring planting. The raised planters took a lot of work out of planting and it will make weeding much easier and protect the plants from the rabbits. We’ll see if my blaming the rabbits last year was correct, or if the squirrels were helping them out.

I planted Red Romaine Lettuce, Pak Choi, Beets, and Red Onions (The sign said Candy Onions which are Yellow and I didn’t check the sticks in the trays. I should know better.) I don’t know when these turn red, but I planted them for green onions. I’ll find out in a month or so.

Here are the new raised planters that I got from Lee Murdock’s brother. I know that these will be rabbit-proof, but I hope that hey don’t become convenient feeding troughs for the deer. Fortunately, I have only seen one deer in the garden all the years that I have been gardening here.

I contracted with his landscaper to have them delivered and fortunately the weather cooperated. He had emptied them and put the dirt in his trailer, so we wanted to place the planters in their final locations. I made a quick decision and decided to put one where the composter is and three along  the walkway where I had planted the eggplant. We moved the composter out of the way and he brought the first planter.

The planters are about 16 inches off the ground and the box is 12-14 inches deep. The area is 2 X 4 feet. They appeared to be manufactured, rather than homemade and made of 1 inch thick cedar with 2 X 2 cedar legs and framing. They’ll need to be re-stained as they are well-worn, but in structurally good condition. While he went back to get the second planter, I trimmed the pine tree to make room. We got the second planter and then he thought it best to fill these two before bringing the others. He filled them with the most beautiful black soil that I have ever seen.

We got the other two installed and filled and I thought we were done, but there were two more planters when I thought we were getting four! I needed to figure out where to put them very quickly, and we installed them in the middle bed. I will remove the wood from that bed, and will likely just increase the size of the other two original beds and fill them to the top with soil. I’ll probably add soil and compost to each one to increase the depth and I am ready to plant spring greens and other early crops without having to worry about the weather.

In the off-season my garden becomes a vehicle for story. I wrote a story about how on certain nights with a full moon, the garden path transforms into a moonbeam path, and you can walk on it into the magical land of Lunaria. I recorded the story with my granddaughter, Annabelle.

I created the image below from a photograph of the garden path from a few years back and picture of the eclipsed moon that I took several years ago. The starfield came from a NASA photograph. Thank you, Photoshop!

I have started seriously thinking about my raised bed garden this year and finally got my seed order into Terroir Seeds today. Here is what I ordered:

3 – Slow Bolting Cilantro
3 – Genovese Basil
1 – Cocozelle Zucchini
1 – True Lemon Cucumber
1 – Crystal Apple Cucumber
1 – Cucamelon/Mouse

I checked on the chives and they are sticking up an inch or two, maybe about a week or so behind last year.

Mild weather this fall allowed this final, final harvest from a potted plant next to the deck. They were labeled as cherry tomatoes, but I got an heirloom plant. I picked these when they were still green, just before the first hard frost, and they have been ripening on the kitchen counter for a couple of weeks. This is my latest tomato harvest ever. What a way to wrap up the year – a mostly failed garden, but the earliest and latest harvest heirloom tomatoes that I’ve ever had.

At least the herbs did well this year. I’ll be picking them into January. My back door bounty, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme.