Garden Update

Here are a few pictures of our garden. Amazingly enough, things seem to be growing even though I haven't spent nearly as much time "researching" everything this year. Fortunately, we've been getting alot of rain almost daily here in the afternoons so I haven't had to remember to water everything.

These are the tomato plants. The cherry tomatoes have several small tomatoes on them. These are Kevin's job since I really messed up our tomato plants last year (blight) and since I don't really eat tomatoes anyway. We are keeping them on the deck to monitor them closely. They are a little droopy in this picture because I took the pics late in the day and it had been sunny all day.

Those ridiculously tall things are Fletcher's sunflowers. He brought a tiny plant home from school and we put it in the garden along with a few other seeds we had leftover from last year. I have a feeling these are going to get huge.

These are our cucumbers with a squash in the middle (don't ask). Last year our cucumbers were the only thing that grew and they sort of took over the garden and were climbing all over the little fence. This solution may not work for the long haul. I couldn't remember how many plants we bought last year (3) so we bought some this year (6). Oops! I think it is safe to say we will have plenty of cucumbers. That's a crooked neck yellow squash in the orange pot in the back corner.

The plants in the green trellis are baby watermelons. They seem to be growing fine. The other plants between the trellis and the sunflowers are squash and a variety of pepper plants (bell and banana) and a basil plant. My cilantro is to the left of the green trellis. I am sad to say it isn't looking so hot. I love cilantro and was hoping it would take off. Our blueberry bushes are in the orange pots next to the garden. They do have lots of new leaves but no berries. I think I probably need to transplant them directly into the ground.

These are Kevin's jalapeno plants. I didn't want them in the regular garden in case the kids touched them. He accidentally whacked one of them with the weed eater, but I think they survived. You can see one single pepper growing in the very center of the photo.

Crockpot Gardening

There's a crockpot cookbook called "Fix-It and Forget-It."

I wish gardening were that way. I wish I could just buy the plants, plant them, turn the garden on then reap the harvest in 7-8 weeks. Wouldn't that be awesome? But if gardening were easy, everyone would be doing it and we wouldn't need produce sections of grocery stores.

After our miserable attempt at a garden last year, we are trying again this year. We are gluttons for punishment I suppose. I decided to skip the spring garden altogether since we planted on Feb. 15 then it snowed on March 1. Yeah, snow isn't good for brand new plants.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to mess with it again this year. But then something happened.

We had four blueberry bushes in pots around our garden. I bought the plants at Sams so I didn't exactly have high hopes for them. They sat in those pots through freezing temperatures and three snowfalls. They were nothing but twigs sticking out of the dirt. But when spring came, Kevin walked in one afternoon and said, "Your blueberry bushes have leaves on them."

Seriously? I hadn't done anything with them all winter. I assumed they were dead.

So my interest in gardening was renewed.

This year's crop includes: tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, jalapenos, yellow squash, California bell peppers, yellow banana peppers, sugar baby watermelons (the little kind), cilantro, basil, and some slicing cucumbers. We decided to skip the strawberries this year.

It is raining here so I didn't get a picture yet. Stay tuned for updates.

Linus Would Be Proud

It's the great pumpkin Charlie Brown. Or in our case, it's nothing short of a miracle. We have one orange pumpkin and three or four white ones growing in our garden. They should be a nice size by the time Halloween gets here.

The Summer Garden

What an adventure this has been!

Of everything we've planted the cucumbers have done the best even though they have taken over a portion of the fencing around the garden. Fletcher and Kevin have especially enjoyed eating them. We were getting tomatoes too until the blight completely destroyed them. They were all very small though.

We took out the carrots and the onions because they weren't growing. We are holding on to a little hope for the strawberries and leaving the peppers just in case. I didn't have much hope for the blueberries in the first place since they were an impulse purchase at Sam's. I probably should do some research to see what kind of blueberry plants grow best around here.

This white flower is a bloom on one of the strawberry plants.

I did buy a pack of mini pumpkin seeds for the boys to plant. It says it takes 100 days to grow. So that means we should plant them today. I don't think we will plant anything else for the fall.

Will I do a garden again next year? I'm not sure. I have learned alot, but I still realize there's so much to learn. I think I know a little more about what NOT to do. With North Carolina's unpredictible spring weather (remember it snowed on March 1 after we planted stuff on Feb. 15), I don't think I'll do a spring garden. But we may try another summer garden.

Worse Than Middle School Girls

Who knew a garden could cause so much drama in my life.

Now our tomatoes have blight.

I didn't know tomatoes could get blight or what is was for that matter. Thank you Google.

I bought something called Organicide which is just what you think it is. An organic fungicide that is supposed to be ok for plants without spraying toxic chemicals on them.

I bought it because that is the only thing Lowe's had that seemed to be organic. Out of curiousity, I googled its name to see if others had used it with any success.

After clicking on a few websites including some "gardening" forums, I realized that Organicide is apparently very effective if one is having difficulty with his cannabis sativa plants.

Kevin will tell you that I am very naive about some things. And if you have to look up cannabis sativa then I don't feel so bad.

I also find it highly ironic that the first issue of my free subscription to Organic Gardening arrived yesterday in the mail. Grrrrrrrr!

Mary, Mary Quite Contrary

How does your garden grow?

Thought it might be time for a garden update.

We are actually seeing a few tomatoes.

These are the Better Bush kind. They seem to be doing well and growing really fast.

These are the Roma (at least I think so). Someone removed the little markers before we had a chance to make sure we knew which was which.

Unfortunately, our strawberries aren't getting very big. There are a few that are growing but some critter is getting to them before they ripen all the way. Must be a squirrel or maybe a bird. Any ideas? I just hope this same critter doesn't like tomotoes!

We've been watering more often and we've gotten a good bit of rain recently. I added some fertilizer to the cucumbers and pepper plants so we'll see if that helps. This gardening stuff is much harder than I thought it would be! :-)

Summer Garden

I have to let you in on a little secret. I'm not so sure about all this gardening stuff.

According to what I read, our broccoli and lettuce should have already produced by now making room for our summer plants. Most everything we planted said it would mature between 60-75 days. We planted on Feb. 15. I'm no mathematical genius (but I did major in it in college), but that tells me that by now we should have some serious maturity.

I'm not sure if this counts. Maybe my boys can split the floret and get their vegetable nutrients for the day.

I might be able to serve Kevin a tiny side salad with our buttercrunch lettuce. Any idea why the lettuce seems to be doing great near the sides of the garden but not in the middle. Do the pressure treated posts Kevin used to assemble the structure add some kind of fertilizer I don't know about. Hmmmmm?

Maybe it has something to do with the 3 or 4 really cold/freezing nights we had after Feb. 15.

It does look like we'll be having a few strawberries soon. Fletcher reminded me not to eat the green ones because they don't taste good. Voice of experience? I didn't ask.

In good faith we went ahead and squeezed in some Lady Bell peppers, burpless cucumbers (whatever that means) and six tomato plants. Three of the tomato plants are called Better Bush. The guy at the gardening place said they are good to grow in raised beds and containers because they only get about 3 feet tall. The other kind are La Roma. We used pots since we didn't have much room anyway and tomatoes are prone to diseases. I'm not sure whether we will need stakes or not so we put them in just in case.

We haven't been getting much rain so Fletcher and I have been diligently watering. The boys and I were in Sams awhile back and we saw this really cool setup. Kevin said, "No." Maybe next year. . .

Garden Update

It was supposed to hit 32 degrees last night. In April. Six days before Easter. 32 degrees. The weather here confuses me.

So far our garden seems to be doing well, but I'm not sure how the plants will handle these crazy temps. Here are some pictures.

Green things coming up - don't appear to be weeds. This is a good sign.

Our strawberry plants are starting to flower. A couple of plants died, but we planted four more.

Broccoli and buttercrunch lettuce. I thought the broccoli wasn't going to make it, but it has rallied and looks like it might be ok. We'll be making a teeny tiny salad any day now with the lettuce.
Our onions and carrots. The onions are looking rough. The carrots have a ways to go.

These are our blueberry bushes. An impulse buy at Sam's Club. There were four bushes - early, mid and late bearing so I thought we'd try them since the boys love blueberries. They are so expensive in the store! The plants we bought are two years old. From what I've read, a plant has to be three years old to really start producing. So we will probably get a few berries this year and then have to find a spot to transplant them for next year. Blueberry bushes need more room than what they can have in this small garden so we'll either put them directly into the ground or find some very large pots.
So there you have it. We've gotten enough rain in the last few weeks that we haven't had to do any watering. Let's hope that rain continues!

Now I have to figure out how to plant our summer plants - tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers. I'll either need another bed or have to wait until the broccoli and lettuce is done. April 15 is supposed to be the "magic" day around here, but after last nights low temps, I'm not so sure.

Garden Update

We had wonderful weather here this weekend. The boys spent most of the day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday outside. Fletcher even got a sunburn on his neck and cheeks. I didn't even think about putting sunblock on him. Oops!

I was certain that we had killed our garden. With the freezing temps and the snow, I was mentally prepared that all of our plants would be dead. We tried to cover the garden every night the temps went below freezing, but we forgot one night. So many people told us we planted too early even though we were following the dates that the "master gardener" had given us.

I took these pictures at dusk - that is why they aren't great. Well, that and the fact that I am not a very good photographer in general. We were so caught up visiting with neighbors and watching the kids play that I forgot to take them until it was almost too late.

This is our buttercrunch lettuce planted from seeds (upclose shot of the teeny tiny leaves sprouting out of the dirt). The tiny blue flecks are explained in the next paragraph:

These are our carrots also planted from seeds- can you see the tiny green sprouts or should I say the tiny blurry green sprouts at the top center of the pic? Also note the blue flecks in the dirt to the left of the green sprouts. We went to all this trouble to get organic compost and organic seeds and then the tarp we used to cover the plants flaked off into the dirt. There's no way to pick it out or rake it out without messing up the plants. So now we have an "organic garden" with toxic blue plastic in the soil. I suppose you win some, you lose some.

More carrots. Onions to the left.

These are the strawberries planted from plants, not seeds. They are only so-so. There's actually some new growth of a few of the original plants. The nice green ones you see sticking up are new. My friend planted some and gave me 4 of her leftovers so we put those in just in case ours don't produce.

Let's observe a moment of silence for the broccoli and the onions which started as plants, not seeds (overhead shot). I don't think we can resurrect them. We'll see how they do, but let's just say I'm not counting on making chicken broccoli stir fry anytime soon. Even though we had the stakes up, the wind shifted some and part of the tarp fell on the onions crushing them.

Family Project - Part Two

The dirt is in. The plants are in. The rabbit fence is around the garden (until we get a nasty letter from our HOA telling us we didn't submit plans and ask for approval).


We might get snow next week. Arghhhhhh!


First a quick video and then two pictures for those of you who still use dial up and have trouble getting videos. I won't mention any names but these are the same people who still don't have call waiting and only recently switched from rotary dial phones. . .

Left to right strawberries (that's mulch on top of them), broccoli, lettuce, onions, carrots.

I realize it may look like Kevin and Fletcher are doing all the work, but someone had to take pictures. Luke "helped" by pulling up several of the onion plants right after we put them in. Maybe it is a combo rabbit/toddler fence.