Hairyshoefairy, Quite Contrary, How Does Your Garden Grow? Parts IV and V

Seeing as how this is my first attempt at a real garden all on my own I’ve had to rely heavily on other people’s knowledge and experience and everyone I’ve talked to and everything I’ve read said, due to our freaky Utah weather, I should wait to plant my more fragile plants (pretty much everything but peas) outside until sometime between Mother’s Day and Memorial Day.  On Saturday afternoon I hoed the not-yet-used part of my garden and re-weeded with with Peanut’s “help” while Wingnut prodded me with a muddy fork.  After clearing it of weeds I gathered all my cute little starts and a few other seeds and planted them in little rows.  It rained and even hailed a little bit while I was planting but I didn’t mind.  I like rain.

I think it’s funny how fuzzy the tomato plants are.

There was a tiny little snail suctioned to the side of one of my little start cups.  After taking the picture I put it back in the garden.

I love how the pea tendrils curl around one another and knot together.  They get tighter and more knotted every time I go out to check on them.

I can’t remember if I posted about it earlier but for Mother’s Day ODD game me some boxes to plant things inside.  We looked around for some boxes but I couldn’t find anything that was quite right in the garden area so I looked in the home organization department and found these white plastic boxes.  They were the perfect size for what I wanted so we got four.  ODD drilled holes in the bottom so they could drain and filled them with dirt for me.  I transplanted my basil in one, my chives in another, and some wild strawberry seeds in the other two.  Just a couple of days later some strawberries began showing up.  They’re just tiny but they’re growing!

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On Monday morning I awoke to snow covering the ground.  Lots of it.  And it was still coming down.  Yeah, that’s right.  Snow on May 24th.  Considering the aforementioned freaky Utah weather this isn’t all that surprising.  My mom says when she graduated from high school back in the seventies it snowed on her graduation day.  It’s just one of Utah’s weird things.  Despite not being all that surprised I was rather disappointed and concerned about my plants.  After it had melted a bit I ventured outside to see how they faired.

They were drowned.

All my precious little starts that I carefully grew indoors for weeks and weeks were under as much as two inches of water in places.

This little pepper guy?  He’s completely under water.

Same story with this sad little tomato.

I was pretty much speechless and couldn’t believe they’d really all been wiped out so quickly.  One friend told me they still might pull through but I checked again this afternoon and they’re still all sad and dead looking except for my hearty little peas.  Why can’t all my plants be as tough as peas?

I still have seeds for beans, onions, and pumpkins in the ground and have hope that they can pull through but we’ll see as a bit more time goes by.

On a happier note ODD saw an itty bitty snail in one of my strawberry boxes.  It was even smaller than the one suctioned to the side of my start cup and was almost translucent so I had to share.  Do I need to be worried about it eating my strawberries as they grow? I think something is already eating my peas.  Lots of the leaves have big chunks eaten out of them but I’m not sure what it is or what to do about it.  It’s probably time to fire up Google to see what I can find out about it.

Since all my tomato and pepper plants have been demolished and I don’t have time to start over from the beginning because of the abbreviated growing season here I think I’m going to pick up some bigger, heartier starts from a garden store to get things going and hope the snow is really done for the summer.