First garden with pics (and questions)

Hi. This is my first square foot garden and I got a little bit of a late start on it. I didn't start any of my plants indoors. They're all from seed outside so I know I might not get a good crop of everything.

The first picture is right after I built the garden and before I planted anything. Then the rest are pictures from today. I planted almost everything the last weekend of April. I didn't plant my watermelon until 2 or 3 weeks ago. I don't have anything labeled but I have a sheet of paper with a hand drawn picture of the garden and what is in each square.

My question is about what's coming up. It looks like the same thing is growing in a few different squares. We were getting so much rain I finally just decided to go out one Saturday between times it rained and planted. So my fingers got pretty dirty and I could have ended up with seeds stuck to my fingers and accidentally planted them in with other plants in the wrong squares. Since I have no idea what my plants are supposed to look like right now I wondered if someone could tell me what I could pull out? There's a lacy looking leaf in all three of the last pictures and some of my spinach looks like it has grass growing with the plant. Is that the way it's supposed to look?

From the back, left side: cucumbers (there is a 3rd plant there because my H couldn't stand me to pull it out - he replanted it), sweet peas, peppers, watermelon,
2nd row: carrots, empty, onions, empty,
next row: lettuce, basil, parsely, tomato
front row: swiss chard, lettuce, spinach and tomato

The fourth picture is supposed to be spinach. The fifth one is supposed to be lettuce and the last one is supposed to be peppers. Can anyone tell which ones are supposed to be there and which ones I need to pull?

Your first garden looks great. I would not worry about a stray seed or plant. Let them go and enjoy the surprise later on. My garden has done the same thing and I didn't have any rain - just sticky fingers on my part.

Relax and enjoy the growing of the veggies. They are not particular who their neighbors are in most cases.

Bruce

Thanks for the advice Bruce. I'll just let them grow then. Somebody is going to be very happy about that around here.

I'm not sure what the leafy one is.... what kind of lettuce did you plant? It almost looks like a marigold to me. And the spinach does have the long grass looking leaves when it starts growing, they are just the seed leaves and will die off as the plant grows.

The front row has romaine lettuce and the second row has bibb lettuce. At least that's what my intentions were.

I think your garden looks fabulous! Many thanks for sharing.

Regarding your stray seeds, I wouldn't worry too much. Just because something pops up doesn't mean you have to pull it. Let it percolate a bit. It will identify itself before long. If it matches the rest of the square, leave it alone. If it doesn't look like the rest, pull it out.

As a fellow first-timer, I think your garden looks great! It's healthy and green which is what matters. I say leave the strays and look forward to surprises later. =)

junebug, one little observation on my part. I rather think the the four squares at the junction of your two trellises are going to be a little bit hard to weed.

I only noticed it as I am not too long in the arm and I have to really stretch even when I want to get to the far edge of a second square. Do you have long arms?

But your garden does look good and it will be interesting to see what your plants turn out to be.

I was a little concerned about the 2 trellises too. But I figured it would be worth a try to see how it goes. I don't have long arms but the squares in the trellis string are big and hopefully it will work out. I wanted too many climbing plants for one box but I didn't want to set up 2 boxes my first year. So I'm experimenting.

junebug wrote:I was a little concerned about the 2 trellises too.

Just make sure none of the local kids start kicking soccer balls into them.

I left my son with a real dilemma, trellis on 3 sides. These were the one's I dug out of my beds and took to him to plant sit. I even took him the bed - he had some leftover MM. There's 2 eggplants 3 peppers in the middle of 11 tomatos. Sure hope those big squares in the trellis net allow him to tend to them. But you do what you have to do at the time. The rest of the tomatos and peppers are in pots.

Kay

Any advance on three sides?

If you look at the picture closely, you will see that I left him a 1/2 square opening at the corner to stick his hand through. Nothing like presenting a challenge to a newbie gardener.

At this point, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I'll ask him to send me some pics this weekend so I can post on the Tues tomato thread.


Kay