Hello! My plants have now been outside for a month and besides some cold nights about a week ago it's been smooth sailing. Let's look back and see how much these cuties have grown.
Here they are on May 2nd after having survived the first night outside:
Here's the next day...looking quite bedraggled from all the sun (note to self: next year don't worry about hardening off but do give them a few days of partial sun before going all in):
But then things started looking up. Here they are on May 7th, growing well:
Here's the whole bed on May 8th, still looking pretty sparse:
Here are some baby beets on May 10th:
Here's the whole bed on May 16th, getting a little greener. I actually had too much room and had to go out and buy some more veggies (starts cause I was too late for seeds) from Greensgrow. I got an eggplant (still trying to get just one eggplant, maybe the third time's the charm?), Green Zebra tomato, yellow pear tomato, some lemon cucumbers and zucchini:
May 20th:
are we getting sick of the same picture yet??
May 22nd:
hey, slightly different angle!
Which brings us to today, the last day of May:
lots of growth thanks to all that rain!
Almost all of the tomatoes are staked (or, uh, should be...) and last night I made myself a very little salad of arugula, beet greens and baby chard. Pretty good! My father came down and helped me with those trellises, which are just from the South Philly Lowe's painted with leftover paint from the trim of my house. I think I may paint the raised bed that color, too. The wall is my neighbor's garage and he graciously told me to do whatever I wanted with it, including drilling things into it. Thanks, Matt!
So here's what it all looks like now that the back is cleared:
That back patch of dirt will hopefully be grass soon and next year I'd like to get some of the concrete out of there, but for now the concrete is integral in keeping the weeds away. And I think my plants are loving the raised bed! They should, there are like 40 gallons of Bennett Compost in there.
And now it's June (almost) and the real growing will begin. And the real test of the irrigation system. But one month in the raised bed is looking good!