Keyhole Is Planted

Yesterday we were able to get the first keyhole garden planted.

I will add this caveat:  Everything I did is wrong according to the experts so don’t do as I do! 

They say plant it completely full . . I forgot how many plants they say to plant . . like over 100.  They say don’t plant seeds . . plant bedding plants. They say don’t plant it during the summer . . get it all done in the spring.

There were very few plants left in the few garden type stores we have here. The time for planting a garden in this area is pretty much past. In two weeks, our night temps will be over 70° and our day temps will consistently be above 90° at that temp, most tomatoes stop setting fruit. The plants that are here are $3.50 to $3.99 each. There weren’t many of the 6 or 9 pack seedlings available. I’m not sure if that’s a trend happening everywhere or, if here, there just isn’t much gardening and people who do plant only want one or two plants to stick in a flower bed. I was not going to pay almost $400 for plants to stick in there so I did buy 4 pepper plants, and used a few struggling habanero pepper plants that I had started from seeds. They had been struggling and I had never planted them in the garden so we’ll see if I can nurse them to good health in the keyhole. Otherwise, I planted seeds. I had a few partial seed packets from when I planted the garden. I planted a few of many different things – just to see how it all does.

Around the outer edges, I planted some long beans, yellow squash, cantaloupe and okra. The okra is more of a test .. to see if it’s my garden soil or our water that’s causing me so much trouble growing okra in the garden. If it grows correctly, I will have to use a ladder to harvest the okra.

If you see the pieces of wood laying on the dirt, that’s where I left a spot unplanted to put a few zucchini seeds. I seem to be out of zucchini seeds but with the zucchini bread, zucchini cake and zucchini pickles, we’re suddenly finding ourselves wanting more zucchini.

Along the pie cutout, I planted cucumbers. Those and the beans and cantaloupe can hang over the sides.

As you go toward the middle of the keyhole, I planted lettuce (it’s way too late to plant lettuce here), daikon radishes, leeks, chives, pepper cress, jalapeno peppers . . I can’t remember what all I planted. I started out with a diagram and writing it all down but then got sloppy and figured since it’s so late and I was planting seeds instead of plants . . I’d just empty out some seed packets and see what happened.

So . . now we wait . . to see what happens!