Gardening - 2013 - July 29

My life has been hecktic. Suffice to say, my one 16 year old cat was diagnosed with cancer back in February and we lost him this month. I'm also trying to sort through stuff both literally and figuratively, which has been good. I also got myself a new computer (Hello, Steam. I missed you). Oh and Summer Reading Madness.

So the garden. Here's where I stand:

• Two mint plants from The Farm: Chocolate and Apple
• A catnip plant.
• Marigolds to attract bees, but a bit late it seems.
• Two lettuce. One should be iceberg but the other sprout seems to look NOTHING like the other. Maybe Little Caesar?
• Lemon Verbena plant barely holding on (needs potted in a bigger pot).
• Same tomatoes as before but I think I'm only getting two tomatoes in total this year. :-\ That's all that's growing. Might be getting more flowers soon. Not sure.
• A strawberry plant
• And a compost that was doing well then got screwed up (too wet) and I will turn around again because I've done so before. Although, the tub is pretty full.

Gardening is a lukewarm success this year. I'm happy to report that I got things from seed to survive, but all I can think is that in Year 3, I'll pull off what I want from my garden. Until then, it is nice to have the garden even if it isn't doing much. I'm hoping this winter I can move stuff to the greenhouse I wound up with (it's a little dinky thing) just to winter it over (i.e. the strawberry plant) as I like the herbs and am happy to have them.

The Etsy shop will be back I hope by the end of August. I just needed a break as I wasn't checking it and it needs more focus than I could dedicate. I also was just trying to see what stuff I took away I missed and surprisingly, the shop fell into that. Finding the time to craft for it though is hard.

Lessons Learned

• Need more flowering plants or bees, but I doubt I can keep bees here (township says I could but considering I'm in an apartment...)
• Need to reconsider where the tomato plants went because I can't put them all along the outer edge.