Empty Garden

Today was a bit windy providing a slight chill, but it was an otherwise gorgeous day! I will thank Elton John for lending me his song for the title of this post, Empty Garden. Why? Because the beautiful day reminded me that my garden is, in fact, empty. Fortunately, I have some seedlings ready to go! Last week, I planted some tomato, pepper, cucumber, and basil seeds in a seed-starter 'greenhouse.' Everything has sprouted...except the pepper seeds. My original plan was to fill the garden bed with pepper plants but I decided to add some tomato plants along with some pickling cucumbers. The basil I started I intend to plant in a pot and keep it inside for ease of harvesting and using fresh basil in the kitchen. Even though I have expanded from only planting peppers, I am a bit bothered by the fact that the peppers haven't sprouted. Yesterday, I bought another packet of pepper seeds to plant so I will hopefully have them sprouted and ready to go soon.

Given the weather, I spent some time working in my empty garden. I added some of the compost to the bed and worked it in. I haven't been adding any new material to the compost bin because I want to be sure that the compost is usable for this season. The problem is that I now have quite a bit of compost-able material and I have no place to put it until after I plant the bed.