Basilmania!

This week has been a flurry of activity in the garden. After ridding those large raised beds of weeds and tilling up the soil I realized they were going to need a lot more soil to replace all that I had lost in the process of weeding (obviously they have been overgrown by weeds for several years, the roots were DEEP and clinging tightly to as much soil as they could so despite my attempts to break them up and shake them out, they still took quite a lot away.

Mom brought five trash cans full of great soil from her house (she bought a big pile of it last year and only used half) so I was able to fill in one of the beds as well as three wine barrels and a few smaller pots. In the wine barrels we planted two varieties of tomatoes, two types of pumpkins, some yellow crookneck squash, some basil, garlic and marigolds. In the raised bed I put strawberries along two edges, a cherry tomato, a couple basils, some garlic, some marigolds, lilliums and dahlias. I also put one marigold in each of my cilantro planter boxes and four in the corners of my basil box because they keep away many pests in the garden, and they look pretty.

I'm pretty excited about the wine barrel gardens, they look swell already and once they all start to bare fruit and vegetables it will be super special. It's late, more later.