Garden of weedin'!

It's been a while since I've shown you my garden. It's grown a bit since last we looked.

I've meant to post a garden update (because I have to admit that I'm very proud of my garden!) before now, but to be perfectly honest I was a little too lazy to get out there and take pictures. Anyway, the important thing is that it did finally happen!
I've loved watching my little garden grow this year. I look at it out the window all the time, and it makes me feel so accomplished! I've already had several salads with the lettuce we planted!

My favorite part of growing lettuce is the fact that it's always there, waiting for me to pick exactly how much I need. Usually lettuce goes bad before I can eat it all. This way I have a lot more leeway, although and I'm having a hard time keeping up and think next year one or two fewer plants will be fine.

I also recently discovered that we actually have broccoli! It's not ready to cook and eat yet, but it's getting there!

On the other side of the garden are the pumpkins which are purely for fun. I can't wait to see the pumpkins grow, and they're working on it! I've found the beginnings of vines and flowers!

Sadly, we did lose one of our tomato plants, but we still have three others which is a small miracle (I killed all our tomatoes last year!)

Are you growing a garden? How is your garden growing?

How does your garden grow?

One of the things that both excited me and sold me on our house was the big backyard. I had visions and plans for it even though we moved in September, and the yard was slowly dying as we headed into the fall and winter.
It wasn't gorgeous out quite yet, but it's getting warmer and it's getting time to do things in the yard! A couple weekends ago it was nice out, so we started our garden! I knew exactly where I wanted to put it, and when I saw the wood garden kit at Home Depot I knew it was perfect for our first real garden!

It isn't perfect, but it's a nice improvement on last year's garden. The container garden didn't work out as well as I'd hoped last year, so I'm happy to see this in our yard this summer!

Some of our plants are doing better than others. These guys are the romaine lettuce plants. They don't look like much, but trust me when I say they have definitely grown!
Our tomatoes are not fairing as well at the moment because there's not nearly as much sun as they'd like. As long as they can hold on a little longer they will be happy though!

On the other side of the garden, my broccoli are definitely growing, and the jalapeno pepper is growing new leaves! I'm really excited about the fresh vegetables we have this summer, whatever we happen to get!

Are you gardening this summer?

Zucchini!

I have a confession. I had no idea what these plants were. I knew they were some kind of squash, and I knew what seeds I had planted, but I had no idea what type of plant this particular one was because, quite frankly, I just lost track when I planted.

But good news! I now know!

It looks like some time in the near future (I have no idea how fast these things grow) we will have a zucchini in our garden!

Since it's been so unusually wet and cloudy here our plants are a little stunted. All except the sugar snap peas, of course, which like wet weather. They're going crazy.

I'm just fascinated with the little vines that this plant puts out. They will grab onto just about anything, even each other! Teamwork at its finest.

Anyway, there is a reason that I'm posting yet ANOTHER garden update. First, because I am proud of our garden, but second because, to be perfectly honest, life has gotten away from me lately.

I've been babysitting more, which is nice (more hours are always welcome), decided I'm going to start selling Mary Kay while I continue to look for a job, volunteering at Purrfect Pals, a cat shelter out here, getting discouraged by the lack of jobs available (nevermind the rejection letters) and making huge, life-changing decisions.

For all these reasons, I've been quiet, and decided that some pictures of our quickly growing plants was necessary.

Don't you agree?

What the hay?

My compost hasn't been doing very well lately. I've been finding a lot of flies (not necessarily bad, just annoying if you can avoid them), mold and, recently, mushrooms in my compost. Now, flies and mold are part of the decomposition process, but not necessarily what you want in your compost. Mushrooms are definitely not welcome there.
I was able to determine through my internet researching that my compost was too wet. This is an issue, since I live in the Pacific Northwest and, well, it's wet here. So I covered the top of the bin with a plastic bag, hoping that would keep the water down a little bit. When that didn't exactly work, I decided I needed worms.
Turns out Petco sells the red wigglers I needed! (Note, when going to buy worms, do not buy meal worms, and, whatever you do, don't LOOK at them!! They are disgusting). So I sent Geoff out to get worms, and he came back with this.

Yes, that is a bale of straw, not hay (What the Straw? didn't sound as good as a blog title). And yes, it is hanging out the back of his car. When I told my sister, she said: "I didn't realize you guys were that
rural." Me either!

But apparently we live close enough to the country to be able to buy bales of straw in the local feed supply store. Who knew?

So, between the worms eating the stuff and the straw keeping it dry, I think our compost is on its way to recovery!

Meanwhile, I was able to harvest a little compost and spread it around some of our plants. (That's what the blobs of damp, well, compost, are in that picture) I didn't take a picture of the plants that got compost last week, but I swear they are bigger!

Our sugar snap peas don't need compost. They're huge all on their own. I ate about a dozen yesterday, and there are plenty more where they came from!

Rain, rain go away

It's been raining a lot lately...

...which has apparently made the sugar snap peas happy...

...and that, in turn, makes me happy!

It's a jungle out there!

My garden continues to grow, and grow, and grow, but I still haven't seen any fruits (or vegetables) of my labor! Well, that isn't 100% accurate. I have eaten about 4 strawberries off our small plant!

At the grocery store on Sunday we found the perfect tomato plant for us. It's "bred" to never get bigger than it is now, and will produce a lot of tomatoes, too. I'm very excited, since my other plant was, apparently, not going anywhere fast.

Since tomatoes need a lot of sun and warmth, I had to set up a little greenhouse area for it to help it along. It's been very rainy here for the past month, but I'm hoping that, since this little guy is already started, it will be happy with it's foil contraption and ripen those tomatoes for us!

How does your garden grow?

Garden update!

It's been far too long since I've had a good garden update. Up here in the Pacific NW, we're a little behind as far as gardening goes. Friends in the south already have flowers on their tomato plants while mine...well, lets just say it's growing very slowly. Slow and steady my plants are growing though!

Our sugar snap peas have grown tendrils, so I put a couple bamboo skewers out there because they were curling around each other! It's fascinating to see them wrap their way around. I tried to get a picture of it, but couldn't get the camera to focus on the swirls. Oh well.

Hopefully they will soon be big enough to reach the rails and wrap around them. The other plants in that planter are cucumber, and they too are growing nicely. Not vertically as fast as the peas, but they're coming along!

The bulbs, of course, continue to grow like crazy. We have two planters with bulbs, but the second one is a little behind (I didn't take any pictures of it today) because it was in the back, where there is less sun. However, after just a few days on the front patio with the rest of these plants it is already sprouting!

Can you believe they looked like this a week ago??

Last but not least, our strawberries! I have to be honest with you, I think it's fascinating how fruit and squashes pollinate. The fact that there is a "male" and "female" flower, and there are far more males than females on a plant, probably because it takes so much energy to grow a pumpkin, or squash! Strawberries, however, I can't figure out. However, something is happening, because we have several little green strawberries that are growing! I love watching them get bigger every day!

Growing growing growing...

I've recently decided to take on the 365 project, where you take a picture every day for a year. I'm really enjoying the challenge, though other people's pictures sometimes intimidate me, and there are times already when I run out of ideas!
I just took this one for today, and love it. I love the sharpness of the leaves, the edges of the turquoise pot in the background, and the out of focus dirt on the bottom. I also find it fascinating that it used to be nothing more than a stick, and it's neighbors (not pictured) were bulbs! Amazing what a little sun and rain will do for a plant. And I can't wait to see it with actual flowers!

Garden update!

It's hard to keep updated on my garden because right now it's growing so fast! Though it's been a little bit of work every few days because we have to keep transplanting the plants into larger pots, I'm happy with how it's turning out, and can't wait to see the fruits (or vegetables!) of our labor!

Last week I posted on Freecycle (remember how much I love Freecycle??) asking for large pots and possibly a topsy turvy tomato planter (hey, it was worth a shot!) I ended up with a couple large planters (not as big as the one we bought, but still big enough for a couple plants) so on Saturday we planted our quickly growing seedlings into the larger pots!

Currently our balcony looks a little, well, sparse, but I can't wait for the plants to get bigger and become visible over the edge of the pots! Plus, we have a couple bulbs that are starting to grow as well, so flowers will bring a little more color to the balcony.

These tomato plants aren't ready to spend the nights outside. I'm trying to toughen them up by bringing them outside every day and taking them in at night. I can't wait for them to grow bigger so we can put them in more permanent pots!
I love gardening! How about you? How are you gardening this year?

Growth!

I have been meaning to update about our veggies for the past few days, but just haven't gotten around to taking pictures to show their growth. Today, however, I realized that if I don't update soon, the next update will show actual veggies!

On Saturday we headed to Home Depot (actually, Geoff went alone, as I was at a CPR/First Aid training all morning) and came back with, well, a small garden! We were able to fit the cucumbers and sugar snap peas in this one large planter, but our other smaller plants weren't ready yet, so we left them alone.
We do plan on getting a Topsy Turvy tomato planter (or two...we planted 4 tomato plants!) for the tomatoes, which aren't ready to go out in the weather. Earlier this week I did have to move the zucchini (or yellow squash, honestly I don't know which grew and which ended up being duds!) into a couple smaller pots until we can get another large planter.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with the progress at the moment! I was a little worried that it would be too cold outside, but I think we've had our last frost here, and they're in an excellent place for sunlight here. Needless to say, I'm quite thrilled with the progress!

We also bought a strawberry plant, which, after some research I discovered that it will produce fruit for about 3 years before we have to "retire" it. The only issue I foresee with this, is birds! So I will have to make sure no one eats the fruit before we can!

Though there was a rather large initial cost in investing in the pots and soil, I'm OK with that, because we will be able to use them all again and again, especially since I don't know how long it will be before we have our own "real" garden.

Sprouts!

No matter how old I get, I still find it fascinating to see seeds sprouting through the dirt.

On Saturday Geoff and found a farmer's market in the area. We bought local honey (and honey sticks), a delicious mixture for chicken parm that we had Monday night, and mostly just walked and looked. Since it's still a little cool here for growing things, there were many more crafts than produce, but we still had fun.
After that I was inspired to start our own garden. Since we live in a townhouse there really isn't the place for a garden, however I have noticed a fair amount of our neighbors with plants and pots on their balcony, so I thought I'd give it a try myself. As it happens, our balcony faces the east and gets a lot of sun, which is important up here in the Pacific Northwest!
Anyway, as you can see, my seeds aren't ready to go outside, but they are growing fast. I will keep updating their status, and hopefully we will be eating some yummy home-grown cucumbers, sugar snap peas, squash, zucchini and tomatoes! Or at least some of those things, since I can't guarantee they will all live to see the sun!

For now, I'm just enjoying watching them grow!