Impressive growth

It's been an interesting week in the garden. I finally finished planting it last Sunday (April 14th) and had been nurturing it carefully all week. I've been watering it in the afternoon to avoid scorching the leaves, and I've been pulling weeds to remove competition for water and nutrients. Everything was going according to plan.

And then Friday came. And with it came a torrential downpour.

Given my last experience with a heavy rainstorm, I was quite worried. Granted, we had done a lot of work to prevent such a problem in the future (diverting the gutters into a rain barrel, adding more soil in low spots ...), but I was still nervous. While it only rained heavily for about 20 minutes, if you've ever experienced Southern rain storms, you know how much rain can come down in 20 short minutes. Our rain barrel was overflowing before the rain had subsided. This, we discovered, is due to the sad fact that our house only has one downspout on the back half of the house so ALL the rain that hits the roof ends up in the same location ... our rain barrel. But, while there were a few standing puddles of water during the rainstorm, most of it had been absorbed by Saturday morning. I did have to cover one tender plant with a plastic cup because I was afraid it was getting pulverized, but, beyond that, the garden survived the rainstorm without incident.

As the sun rose and warmed the soil on Saturday, I ventured out to check in on my little baby plants and to pull some weeds. I was pretty impressed with what I saw. The beans that I had sown directly into the soil have already started to burst through the ground. I'll need to thin them by Wednesday! The rest of the already-established plants have grown significantly since I first planted them last week!

My squash plants (April 14th and April 21st) have nearly doubled in size in just a week!

This one is harder to see, but my carrots are making good strides as well!

My nasturtium on April 14th and April 21st. Look at the growth!

I love seeing how the plants grow, especially in such a short time! I've been doing some reading, and I think I'm going to start adding JD's coffee grounds to the soil. Apparently you can add them directly to the dirt or make a "tea" with them in water overnight. They supposedly add a lot of nitrogen to the soil, so I'm eager to see what happens there!