Re-starting my garden in June

This (holiday for most of you) weekend started out pretty good but ended tragically for my poor vegetable garden yesterday.

Brian and I spent ALL DAY Saturday working in the yard. I think we started around 9? and worked till about 8. Of course, this is Oklahoma and Oklahoma gets HOT this time of year, so we were forced to take many popsicle breaks.

We have had this HORRENDOUS weed problem since we moved here. We had pulled weeds in the front last year, and earlier this year Brian had time to fertilize the front with Scott's Turfbuilder and weed control. He did not have time to do the backyard though. Let me just say, we had more weeds in our backyard than we did grass. It looked HORRIBLE. So horrible that I thought about taking a picture to show before and after, but I knew I would be too embarrassed to ever show anyone that picture, so I didn't do it. The front yard had a few weeds in it, but it didn't look that bad.

Well, starting a couple weekends ago, and ending on Saturday (with me putting time in during the week when I could) we got on our hands and knees and pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled. Finally we got all of the weeds out. Then Brian had to mow and edge and spray for bugs.

We worked soooo hard on Saturday that we decided not to go to church yesterday and spend some much-needed family time together. Brian is only home on the weekends so we can't get any projects done after work during the week. So it seems like all we do when we see eachother is work work work and more work. Poor Jake ends up having to watch Baby Einstein or play in his crib alot on weekends because there is just SO much that needs to be done. So we decided to devote Sunday to family and doing something fun together. We could not do that today (Memorial Day) because, unfortunately that is not considered a holiday in Brian's line of work. Memorial Day is just another Monday, regular hours, regular travel.

Before we headed to the park on Sunday morning, Brian had one last thing he needed to do to his yard. Fertilize. He used Scott's turfbuilder with weed control, the kind of stuff that looks like kitty litter. Some of it got into my vegetable garden on accident, but he didn't think it would hurt the veggies since they weren't weeds. I noticed my squash flowers open, so I went out and pollinated them. I saw the fertilizer on them but Brian said he thought it was ok so we just left it there and went about our family fun day.

We came home yesterday afternoon and I went to check on my garden (I do this multiple times a day, every day). To my horror, the leaves on the squash and tomatoes were completely wilted. They looked like they were dying! The onions, rosemary, corn, and chives looked okay.

I called Scott's and was told that stuff *could* kill anything that is not grass so that is why you need to take extreme caution to avoid any plants of any kind that you would like to keep. I was told I could try soaking my plants to get the weed killer off of them and depending on how much damage has been done, they possibly could make it. However, the weedkiller is toxic and Scott's advises against consuming anything from any plants that may have come in contact with it.

I was completely devastated. I started my plants from seeds back in March. It seemed to take forever (as well as alot of work and alot of money) to get the garden established. Just in the last week, I saw my first tomato blossoms, first squash, first zucchini. I still had not been able to harvest anything yet.

I was very upset and depressed over the loss of my plants. Working in the garden has become my favorite thing to do. I called Scott's again this morning and asked how long the "half-life" of the product used is. This is basically the amount of time the ingredients are still active in the soil. I was told it is less than 7 days, then I *should* be able to replant.

I called a local plant farm to see if they were open today and explained my situation. They advised I should pull EVERYTHING out of the garden, whether it appears damaged or not, and destroy it, as the ingredients used are very toxic. They said if the half life is supposed to be less than 7 days, that they would wait AT LEAST two weeks, and in the meantime, just water, water, water my boxes of dirt.

I ended up going to the plant farm today and buying 3 tomato and 1 pepper plant. I will just need to baby them in their pots until my soil is un-contaminated. I also bought some herb and flower plants.

As far as my garden goes, I am downsizing a little. I could not find squash plants so if I am going to do squash again I will need to start those from seeds SOON. I am going to soak some onion seeds overnight and start those in the morning (the onions I grew from seeds seemed to do so much better than the sets I transplanted), but I probably won't get to harvest those till next summer. I think I might just use one of the beds for now and save the other for cooler weather plants to be planted closer to the fall. Or maybe corn. I have until July 15 to get corn seeds in the ground- same goes for pumpkins.

The bright side of this is that Jake and I discovered an AWESOME plant farm not too far from here. I had something fun to do on Memorial Day (Jake, not so much, he did not like it when the sprinklers got him. He was good for the first hour or so we were there) for a couple of hours.

Then, I got to come home and play in the dirt. It was hot, so I came inside for an air conditioned popsicle break and started typing this blog entry when Brian came in through the garage door. Scared me to death to hear someone just walk into my house unannounced (the garage itself was open) but once I got over the initial shock, it was a nice surprise.

This Memorial Day Monday is ending ALOT better than it started :-)