A First Year Gardener

My daughter Erica was given control over some small sections of available planting real estate at her rental house this year and became a novice gardener. I went with her in May to help pick some appropriate annual flowers and she picked out a variety of tomatoes, including one pretty heirloom, peppers, a couple of eggplants, pole bean seeds, zucchini seeds and more. I suggested some Osmocote and Miracle Gro. She had enough tools and some tomato cages and a hose and watering can. Her soil looked good and there was a large mound of several years worth of compost on the side of the garage so we filled up all containers with this rich soil and Osmocote rather than buy any bagged potting soil. She also amended the vegetable bed soil a bit with the compost.

The coleus, salvia and marigolds are on the shadier end of the vegetable garden sidewalk border. They have grown quite nicely, from the small plugs in the flower flats. She was quite intrigued by the variety of coleus colors available, although some of my favorite new ones were not in the mix.

I stopped by yesterday to quickly snap these photos, weeds and all. No time to deadhead either, but they look pretty good.

How exciting to harvest the first zucchini of the season!
 

The edging of mixed lettuce has bolted but still looks attractive as a border along the sidewalk:

 

The plants below are perennial, Echinacea (purple coneflower) and dusty miller--which flowers yellow after the first year. Salvia and marigolds were added. Sometimes this blue salvia returns, but it is not reliable in zone 5 and is considered an annual.

We chose the basic stuff, inexpensive and good enough. A spike and petunias (and a large weed visible on the left side!) accent these coleus. I had some old green pots for impatiens and she had four hooks on the edge of the garage. 

We have had above average rainfall this year but the hot days of July require faithful watering and it looks like my daughter has learned well (by osmosis?) from the Queen of Watering.