One garden down & My garden line-up

My trip to Southern California was fun as always. This was a very special trip because I had two very special occasions to celebrate. One being my nephew's first birthday party and the other being his baptism. While I was there I had the opportunity to layout and plant my sister's garden. She has six raised beds in a fenced in area draped with grape vines.
She was so busy with the baby and party planning that she just let me go to town all by my lonesome. I think it took about two hours to finish but after I was done she was surprised to find all of her seedlings that she started from seed thoughtfully organized in her new garden.

The first raised bed is full of cucumbers. I chose the location based on the fencing. This particular raised bed is next to a section of chain link fence that is not covered with grapes. The cucumbers will be trained to climb the fence so this will alleviate her from having to put in a trellis.

The second bed has an assortment of tomato and tomatillo plants with cages around them. It is important to think about watering needs when placing plants in the same raised bed. For example, you wouldn't want corn (a water lover) and tomatoes in the same bed.

The third bed has bell and jalapeno peppers in the majority and then at one end she has onions. The onions and peppers have similar water needs (believe it or not).

The fourth bed has only artichokes. I believe she had 6 seedlings and plugged them all in.

The fifth bed has butter lettuce, rainbow chard, carrots and beets. The butter lettuce was placed at one end of the bed where it will be mostly shaded. I did this because I wanted to prevent it from bolting - like lettuce tends to do in the heat. We'll see how that goes.

The sixth bed will soon have corn growing in it!

After planting we worked on the irrigation of the garden and decided that "spider" sprinkler heads would work best in her situation. A week or so ago she had her gardener put in a simple irrigation system into her beds. She started out with a bubbler and that just didn't do the trick. I would always recommend a soaker or drip system so that water doesn't get onto the leaves of the plants and cause fungus and disease but this can be something we look into for next year. She's off to a great start and I know her garden will produce a ton of tasty organic vegetables for her family.

I had the opportunity to snag some Kaffir Lime leaves. They're in my refrigerator waiting for me to come up with a recipe.

As for me and my garden, I have a tremendous amount of work to do. When I got home a found that my seedlings are even crazier than when I left them. One of my tomato plants has two fully opened blooms and one of my zucchini plants has nine flower buds. This weekend MUST be garden time because I'm starting to feel a bit cramped with these guys in my apartment. Here's what I have so far (pictures to come):

97 tomato plants
38 pepper plants
35 lemon cucumbers
32 turnips
24 lemon basil
20 marigolds (used to help control pests)
16 salad bernet
15 zucchinis
14 parsley
12 eggplants
10 lima beans
10 sunflowers
6 crookneck squash
6 watermelons
5 cantaloupe

I have more seeds like corn, a few more herbs and a couple more squash varieties but they all prefer to be sewn directly into their permanent home so I'll have to plant those on-site.

I'm starting to get the plants prepared/hardened-off by placing next to my open window at night. Luckily the weather is glorious this week.

I'm going to be a busy bee trying to get prepared for the big planting this weekend. Saturday will be a long hard day of digging, turning and planting.

How is YOUR garden moving along?
Daphne