First Fails of the Season

Lest ye think I’m the best gardener ever, I fail constantly in the garden.  It’s the beginning of May, and I have already failed at the following.

Blackberries

Despite my research and planning, my 3 blackberry seedlings are dead.  Our last frost came later than expected in April and wiped out my blackberries.  I’ll have to buy more and start again.

Bed #2

Bed #2 continues to be challenged.  This is the bed that I double-dug in addition to digging out a border and filing it with planting soil for my carrots.  The double digging already had one bad side effect – surfacing a ton of rocks.  But this past week, I discovered another side effect – clover.

The bed is covered in clover.  This weekend, I removed a lot of it with a hand cultivator so I could plant my corn.  I read a lot of conflicting opinions on whether or not clover was beneficial to your garden.  But since I am doing 3-sisters in bed #2, squash will be my ground cover.  So, I definitely don’t need the clover, and it seems to be colonizing.

Pea & Tomato Co-Planting

I thought my peas would be mostly done by the time I was transplanting my tomatoes.  But the late-lasting cold delayed my pea sprouts while my indoor tomato seedlings were going gangbusters.  So, my pea and tomato plants are about the same height right now and are trying to co-exist in the same place.

In the image above, there is a tomato plant behind each pole – the poles will support the tomatoes as they grow.  But I used the same poles for the pea netting.  The pea plants are the row in the very front.

Most likely, I am going to need to pull out the peas before I get much off of them or I’ll be sacrificing my tomato plants.

3 fails down, more to come!