Spring Cleaning

It's the end of March and I'm taking advantage of the warmth this weekend.

• New garden bed - I finally made the decision to put a small (4'x12') raised bed along the North fence. It gets 6-8 hours of morning sun and then it's all shade. I was hesitant about this, but I don't like working on the South side (my neighbor's dog poos and pees all over the fence). 6-8 hours is just enough and if my plants aren't AS successful as previous years it would still be fine with me since I feel confident that I will still get veggies out of it. Also, it's shade by the time I get home from work which would actually be better for me so that I don't have to work in the blazing heat. My dream would be to have a large round bed in the middle of the yard. Basically I would take up the whole yard and lay flagstone paths and such. Some day.
  
• Raised herb bed - I'm looking forward to this! I'm going to start a variety of herbs and lots of basil!
  
• Added bone meal to the soil around my Irises.
• Added Epsom salt around my roses.
• Added ashes (from my neighbor's fire pit) around my Peonies.
  
• Raked up all the leaves and sticks from the fall and winter. I broke them up with my hands and sprinkled them along the back garden bed as mulch to keep the weeds at bay. Every bit helps.
  
• Repotted my tomato seedlings to the next level up. I used some store bought garden soil this time and mixed in a tiny bit of the seed starting mix that I had leftover to make a loose soil. I have 4 grape tomatoes, 4 black krim, 6 persimmon, and 4 roma tomatoes. The roma tomatoes fruit all at once so I'm going to scale it back to 2 roma tomato plants and then start 2 more later in the season.