New pots in the garden!

Transplants in the terrarium

With our cool season veggies well established, the time for planting our warm season veggies had arrived! Warm season veggies are those that cannot live through a frost, like tomatoes, peppers, and squashes. We learned that here, in hardiness zone 8a, our latest probability of frost is around the middle of April. Our winter was very mild and spring arrived early, so we thought it might be safe to transplant some tomatoes in early April. We set April 1st as our goal date for adding pots for tomatoes, zucchini, cow peas, basil, catnip, nasturtiums and marigolds. Just like the rest, we're growing them all from seed. The tomatoes, basil, catnip and marigolds should be started early indoors, so we started those seeds in early February, about 8 weeks ahead of our planting date. We planned to sow the rest of the seeds directly into our garden pots.

Pot 10

Well planting day finally arrived, the transplants were ready as planned, and pots 10-15 went out into the front yard! Pot 10 had been planned for tomatoes, marigolds and basil, but the basil got cut at the last minute in favor of having more space for the tomatoes. Besides, we had reserved a pot especially for basil, pot 12. Pot 11 was for zucchini, cow peas and nasturtiums. We anchored trellises for the zucchini and peas and planted the seeds directly under them. We're hoping the nasturtiums will trail over the edge of the pot. Pot 13 was planted with only marigolds. Pot 14 became home for the catnip transplants.

Top right: pot 15, middle right: pot 14
 and random flower pots

We had a 15th pot planned for more dill, however pot 5 had already been devoted to dill and it has performed very poorly, so we decided not to plant any more just yet. Instead, we picked up a couple of strawberry transplants at the nursery and planted those in pot 15. Hopefully one day we will be eating fresh berries from this random addition! We also added three other pots at random, one planted with zinnia seeds, one with morning glories, and the last one planted with "flower balls" that a little hippie girl gave me, which are flower seeds rolled into a ball of clay. It'll be nice to have a few extra flowers around! With the seeds sown and transplants in place, it's time to sit back and let Mother Nature do her thing for a while...
stay tuned... (Click pics to enlarge)

Side view of the expanded garden. It's reached about two thirds of its total size.