All planted!

After several long hours of work, we finally got everything planted in The Danger Zone.

Here is a photo of our door. We decided to use the metal fencing for the door because we did not have enough bright orange hazard fencing left. I think it is going to work out well - it is certainly much more sturdy!

We got up at 5:30 am on Tuesday and got to work. We first had to finish making the garden beds and secure our door, and then we started planting all of our seedlings (that were not in the best shape because we had to wait so long to plant them). You will notice in the picture above that David has covered his head and legs with dirt - the dirt was his makeshift bug shield. The mosquitos were out in full force that morning, and David was their meal of choice. While the bugs seemed more content to crawl into my eyes than to bite me, David was covered head to toe in bug bites (and still is)! We were also fighting off these tiny black bugs that were keen to eat the leaves off of our seedlings that we had just planted! (Apparently eggplant is their absolute favorite.) We lost a lot of our leafy crops to bugs last year, and so we promptly went to Agway and bought a small spray bottle of pesticide to protect our vegetables from being maimed by these tiny black destroyers. (Sorry Cornell, this garden will not be completely organic this year...)

Here is a list of what we planted in each row:

1 lettuce/carrots/black-tipped lettuce/microgreens

2 big bertha tomatoes/thai basil/grape tomatoes/basil/heritage tomatoes/oregano/celebrity (striped) tomatoes

3 Eggplant/thyme/cajun pepper/tarragon/bell pepper/rosemary

4 sugar snap peas/cucumbers/peas/pickling cucumbers/lavender

5 white swiss chard/broccoli/red swiss chard/sage

6 mustard greens/collard greens/bush beans/cilantro

7 onions/dill/brussel sprouts

top of 8/9 sunflower/corn

8 squash

9 pumpkin

Here is a picture of rows 2 and 3 (the rows that had the most seedlings, which makes for the best picture at this point).

Some of our plants came with fun names this year, like "Big Bertha", or my personal favorite, the "Mr. Stripey" heirloom tomato.