More Garden Things

As of a week and a half after planting, my vegetables now look like this:

As a reminder, the left side is Schultz, and the right is Miracle Gro.

The beans in the Miracle Gro look slightly better, but that might also be because some of the leaves of the beans that were in Schultz were bad looking last week. I don't remember how they looked when I started - should have taken better pictures. Anyway the difference is enough to be marginal in my opinion.

The broccoli however, looks very different. The ones in the Schultz (even the random 2 in pots) look noticeably better than the ones in the Miracle Gro.

Miracle Gro:

Schultz:

Anyway, we'll see if this difference remains the same throughout, or changes as the broccoli continues to grow.

As a side note, today I went to the Home Depot at Brentwood after E and I had a playdate with C and her son S. The plants there definitely were more varied and nicer looking than what I remember of the Home Depot at Overland that Jon and I visited last weekend, but nothing really called to me except some watermelon starters that I sadly have no space for (BOO!), so I didn't get any plants. I did however, get some no melt suet and a suet feeder on a whim, plus a small watering can. Total bill was less than $6 with tax.

After the acquisition of the suet feeder, my bird feeding set up now looks like this:

Last week we actually made a trip to Florissant, because we thought that was where the closet Wild Birds Unlimited store was to us (for some reason, the Warson Woods location didn't show up). At the store we bought a squirrel proof bird feeder that is much more sturdier than the simple plastic one we had (that already showed remarkable chew marks from squirrel teeth). The 'squirrel proof' feature is a result of it having a spring at the top, and if a squirrel climbs on it, its weight closes the hole of the feeder. It was fun earlier this week watching the squirrels try to game the new feeder, but they evidently have been largely unsuccessful given how much bird seed there is remaining this week. 

The weird green patch on top of the mulch is right at the bottom of where the old bird feeder was, and where the old bird seed fell and sprouted. I even watered the patch a few times after they sprouted. That's another unplanned experiment I've got going on, to observe and see what happens to that bird seed patch.