Combining Blogs

I have decided to continue my garden blogging on my personal site Boys Rule My Life. All of my gardening posts are labeled as such for easy searching over there. Please stop by and say hi sometime! :)

How Does Your Garden Grow?

An Update of how the container garden is coming along...

I finally got the second tray of seedlings in pots.

The tray consisted of herbs, melons, a jalapeno plant, cucumber, broccoli, and cauliflower (6 of each). Almost all of the herbs sprouted well in the tray, but only 1 of of the watermelon and 3 of the cantelope sprouted. The broccoli and cauliflower did ok, but I was told it was too late in the season to bother planting them, so they got chunked. :(

The day after I transferred everything to pots, I completely lost the parsley, cucumbers, and thyme. I lost all but one of the cilantro and pepper plants. I don't know if I disrupted the roots too much or if the massive amount of rain we've been getting just drowned them. Either way, I was disappointed.

Since then, I have lost the watermelon plant (the leaves were broken off either by the wind and rain or three little boys... idk which.) I also lost a cucumber and cantelope by the same means.

However, from my original tray of seedlings, I have a cucumber plant thriving that actually produced a blossom for me yesterday!!! Excitement!


After walking around the yard a little bit more, I noticed several watermelon plants that are doing pretty well. They must have planted themselves from the seeds that got thrown into the compost because here is one where the compost pile used to be located:


One in the current compost:

And another one right outside the where the compost is now:



I'm having good luck with the carrots I planted straight into containers instead of starting as seedlings.

After the excitement over last year's carrot harvest, I knew we'd need more this year!

And since these guys were doing so well, I went ahead and replanted the parsley, cilantro, basil, and thyme directly into their respective containers that I had lost them in. Hopefully I see some improvement in them if they don't need to be transferred.

Lillies

Just in case you'd like to see what else I have growing in my backyard, this is a shot of one of three garden boxes around my trees. The lillies are doing beautifully! Some were already planted when we moved in three years ago, others were planted as bulbs last year.

Although, I thought I planted other colors besides pink... maybe those squirrels got to the other bulbs? Oh, well... they still are pretty!

Apple Tree

When we moved into our home, there was a tree in the back yard that we thought was a crab apple tree because the apples were so small and tart. Well, last year we were blessed with nice sized, plump, tart apples! Jeff and the kids (and the dogs) ate them straight; I cooked with them!

I tried to store them, but they didn't keep long in the freezer at all. Hopefully I'll find a better solution to storing them this year. The apples are still small right now, but they are coming along!

The picture below is hi-resolution so you can click on it to see the apples better, if you like. I realize they are hard to see as the leaves and apples are the same colors.


Maybe I should sell the extras as "organic baking apples"! LOL!

More Seedlings! AHHHHH!

What was I thinking planting more??? :)

We've Got Beans!

One week after planting, those flowers turned into beans! Who'da thunk? :)

Container Garden

We started composting last year for this year's garden. Although the compost has done really well (thanks to Jeff), we have decided to use bagged dirt this year for a couple of reasons. I suppose the biggest reason being that I got an "itch" to plant and the compost needed a little more work before I could start.

We've also opted for a container garden this year since we're moving. I was a little scared of the cost of containers because pots are expensive! However, I started noticing all these black plastic pots being put on the side of the road from people who had planted trees and shrubs. These were the perfect size!! And you can't get much better than FREE!! (And you know I'm not against picking things up off the side of the road!)

All these black pots were picked up for free within a week... too bad I had already purchased 9 terracotta colored ones (they'll get used though!).

Nathan, Witt, and I got to work this morning.

Here is one set our seedlings right before transferring into containers:

The beans were already flowering!

The final result:

Planting Seeds

We finally got around to planting some seeds (about 3 weeks later than I wanted to), but I don't think we'll be getting any more surprise snow... so I think it may be good that we waited. :)

I had some Lowe's returns to do for Jeff one day and I spent the return money on three ecofriendly seed starting kits. Basically, unwrap the package, add water and seeds, put on the germination cover and wait. Easy peasy for first timers like us!

We didn't do heirloom or organic seeds this year. I just want to take this to be a learning experience and if we end up with a harvest that'll just be icing on the cake!



Will even got some handwriting practice! :)


So far we have only used two of the kits. We'll plant the third one later to stagger the planting and *hopefully* the harvesting. From left to right we have: 2 rows of green beans, 1 row of limas, 2 rows of cucumbers, 1 row of cantelope, 1 row spinach, 1 row onion, 1 row dill, and 1 row green pepper.



And now we wait...

Choosing Vegetables to Plant

I know it's been forever since my last post, but the pile went cold and there really wasn't much to share in the winter months. We have started using our first compost bin again to get a second pile started, though.

Right now we are deciding what to we want to plant this spring. Here are my initial thoughts although I don't know that we'll have room for everything. :(

jalapenos
broccoli
cauliflower
black eyed peas
lima beans
green beans
spinach
tomatoes
cucumbers
carrots
herbs
onions?
potatoes?
garlic?



We are not going to plant yellow squash or okra because we are always given more than we can handle by friends and family. Might as well use the space for something else!

Are we missing anything? Do you think this is a bit much for a first year? I think I might be intimidating myself. :)