Walls o’Water

It was a busy weekend here in the backyard. The Mighty Hunter came over and banged together two new raised beds for me along the new privacy fence. Here’s a picture with the tomatoes in the new beds before I put the Walls o’Water up:

This year I planted the following varieties: Principe Borghese, Milano Plum, Jaunne Flamme, Marglobe, Black Cherry, Sasha’s Altai and Galina. I planted one of each, in that order, in each bed … so we’ll see how they do. I’m a tiny bit anxious about the contents of the beds — the dirt was pretty good over there — I’d dumped a lot of compost on for the flowers the last few years, so I dug out the beds, then added a big bale of peat moss to each one, three bags of compost and three bags of topsoil. That’s more peat moss than I generally like — it’s so acidic for one thing, but it was the cheapest way to get a lot of volume into those beds. I may have to fertilize a little bit this summer, which I usually try to avoid (I bought some fish emulsion).

I got most of my transplants out of the cold frame this weekend. The Zucchini went in the sunny spot back over by the compost piles. There’s plenty of room for them to sprawl back there, and since I ran a hose all along the inside of the little fence, it should be easier to water this year (I’ve been known to neglect that corner when it gets hot and I don’t want to drag the hose all the way out there).  Here’s a zucchini inside its little hothouse: . They’ll stay in there for another couple of weeks, until it doesn’t look like it’s going to hail anymore, or until it feels like it’s not going to freeze at night. I also put all the tomatoes in walls o’water: