New plants in our city garden

Earlier in May the garden centers were allowed to re-open...probably to give all homeowners something to do while stuck at home. Right away there were waiting lines so I didn't hurry to go search some fresh flowers for our faded winter boxes in the garden.  I hoped that the school would be able to organise a charity flower sale as always, but that couldn't get organised with the current safety measures. Usually it was the school sale that triggered our yearly spur of gardening.

So last week I passed a garden center and spotted no waiting row and took my chance to buy pots, soil, flowers and little vegetable plants.  Now that I had some pots, I could also let the sunflower seeds that Beertje received from his teacher germ.  She had already asked how they were growing and I had had to admit they weren't planted yet. 

Sunflowers

We still keep them in a little pot inside in the sun behind glass.  Heat and humidity ...indeed it only took a few days before the little plants started to pop up

My flower pots

This winter was the first time I had searched for winter proof plants to keep some green in the pots as well as some weights in the pots so they wind wouldn't blow them down on the floor. Because of our series of big winter storms, I had to store the pots for a full month safely on the ground after all, but I did enjoy the sight of some green plants with some tiny flowers now and then.  I had also taken the risk to keep some of the verbena of last summer in each pot and in half of the pots they seemed to have survived winter and started flowering again.  Some of the winterflowers had died off as well, so I had all of half filled pots. Instead of making a uniform composition, I simply filled gaps and added some random flowers to them.  So right now they are a bit of everything: 2 higher plants, some yellow flowers, some left-over verbena and violets and new white and purple summerflowers where I don't remember the flowers (as I was rushing efficiently through the store when I bought them with my mouth mask, avoiding other customers approaching me too closely). 
Now that it's such a mixture, I hope that at least they will be more diverse and resistent to heat, draught or other conditions. A few years ago I had solely lavender which died a few years in a row all together after just 2-4 weeks.

The vegetable square meter

I sure missed the ready to plant vegetables from school which had a decent size to start off with.  Right now I have to start with tiny plants or even seeds so I hope they plants don't get killed before they even get started. We'll see.

I've added a good fresh layer of good soil and only kept a bit of the old mint that seems to grow like nothing anyhow.  I'll miss my mini cucumbers which were always our success of last summers, but couldn't find any.  I'm very curious what will survive and what we'll be able to harvest: cherry tomatoes, radish, normal cucumber, (mini) bell peppers, mint, basil (even though that has failed every single year so far), chives and in a seperate pot some zucchini.