Happy Monday

It's only 10:30 but I can't wait to get home to see my kiddies and tend the garden. I'm installing drip irrigation to my beds sometime this week. I'm so excited because drip systems really help to ward off many of the diseases that can plague vegetable gardens. keeping the soil moist and the foliage dry is key to staving off mosaic virus, wilts, mold, fungus and many other insidious summer garden culprits. Furthermore and just as important, drip systems conserve water and save time.

I'll also be planting my artichokes, lemon verbena, anahiem pepper, bell pepper and marjoram seedlings this weekend. I was planning to do it last weekend but there was too much happening *sigh*.

The weekend before last, I helped my neighbor Lisa plant a vegetable garden. She had been longing for one but didn't have a clue about where to start. We went to the garden supply store together and purchased some FoxFarm organic soil. I LOVE fox farm products, they are simply amazing and I have nothing but great results from using their products. Any how, we also picked up some steer manure. Fox farm organic soil incorporates bat guano and earthworm castings right in to their mix. It's not cheap but it's the best as far as store-bought soil goes. So we double dug the soil and mixed in the steer manure and a few bags of Fox Farm. She's got a serious snail/slug problem resulting from massive bushes in her yard so we had to use Sluggo - It's not my favorite method but it's relatively harmless when compared to others products. I went and surveyed her garden this morning before heading to work. It's pretty and functional as any jardin potager should be. We completely encircled the garden with marigolds and I was delighted to see a sea of little lettuce seedlings just beginning to poke through. As I was standing there a neighbor who lives a few doors down, drove by and asked me if I could help her do the same in her yard... I need to find a way to clone myself.