Garden Update

Snapped a few pics of my garden yesterday. As you can see, everything is doing quite well. I can harvest cilantro now and the basil's not too far behind. Made a salad yesterday and was able to use some of the stalks from the onions. Tasted a little more subtle than green onions.

Slight change of plans.

Good news: We bought a new house yesterday! Bad news: I'm going to have to leave some of my garden behind! Good news: The new house has a large fenced in back yard with plenty of shady AND SUNNY spots! Bad news: Not sure if my container plants will survive the move.

Most of my container plants are small and moveable - - right now. But by the end of next month, they're going to be larger and much harder to move. Time will tell.

Garden Update

Today I had planned on harvesting the remaining lettuce and planting new seeds. But as I was harvesting, I noticed swarms of tiny flying/hopping bugs and a few other larger bugs. The flying ones were ALL OVER the place. The dirt was pretty moist because it's in a semi-shaded area that's not getting much sun. So I decided after harvesting to just let the soil sit for awhile and see if the flying insects go away without anything to munch on.

My potato plants are drooping so badly that they're actually laying on the ground now. The stalks are about two feet high. I don't see any tubers above the ground though. Not sure what's going on there. I'm wondering if they're suffering from lack of sun.

The tomato plant in the ground is about 1/4 of the size of its sister plant in the container. I'm just going to keep watering it to see how the fruit turns out.

The cilantro and basil are really taking off, as is the cucumber plant which I thinned down to one.

The pepper plants and onions are trucking along.

First Harvest!

Harvested some of my leaf lettuce today! It actually looked like it could have been harvested a little earlier - - but the salad turned out pretty good! I was so proud of myself. :)

Garden Update

Basil and Cilantro taking their sweet time... but on May 10th, there was NOTHING there.

Green Pepper isn't doing too bad considering the cool temps we've had lately.



This is a jalapeno plant I got from a gal at work a couple of weeks ago. When she gave it to me, it was just a small seedling. It's grown pretty quickly. It's drooping because I just took the bottle off of it before snapping this pic. Hopefully the squirrels won't dig in it because it's getting too tall for the bottle and I don't have any more chicken wire for a cloche.



Speaking of which, I should take the cloche off of this tomato plant because it's getting too big for it. By the way, this plant is thriving in the container, whereas the other two that are in the ground, are not doing too well. They're half the size or smaller than this one. I believe they're not getting as much sun.




These are my cucumber plants which don't seem to be doing very well. The leaves look like they're being eaten but they're also yellow. I'm not sure if it's too much water or what. It's been raining A LOT lately. I've barely had to water at all the last two weeks because of all the rain. I don't see any bugs on them so I'm not sure what's going on. There are only two left because the one in the middle basically died so I got rid of it. Just going to keep an eye on these two...



Not sure what to think about these yellow onions either. They continue to get longer, and longer, and LONGER, but from what I read online, I'm not supposed to harvest them until fall. I'm thinking by then, they will have grown all over my deck! I may pick one soon just to see how big it is. That's the problem with root veggies. You can't tell what's going on under there!



This is my poblano pepper plant. It's gotten a lot more leaves and is almost as tall as its' cloche.



Last but not least, check out my potato plants!! They're HUGE. I've had to mound up dirt around their bases to cover any tubers because they like to poke out of the ground and if the sun hits them, they go bad. Kind of tricky. I've since learned that I should have planted them in a trench to start off with and then just gradually filled the trench with dirt.

My lettuce needs to be harvested and perfect timing too because I'm taking a salad to my mom's for Memorial Day tomorrow! FIRST HARVEST!!! Yippee!

Garden Update.

Potatoes have sprouted! See 'em? Yay!! They're growing FAST.



Ground tomatoes. They look small, but they have grown in just seven days.


Onions have gotten longer, and the poblano is doing fine.



Cucumbers have sprouted!!! Might end up thinning them out to just one plant. I hear they take over the world.



Container tomato - he's gotten bigger too. Took the other one out to prevent over-crowding.


Green pepper. I'm seeing growth in this one too.


Lettuce is looking good. I was wanting more of a romaine though and this is just looking like loose leaves. And I'm not quite sure when it's ready to pick/eat it. Hmm.

No sprouts yet with the cilantro or basil so I didn't take pictures of them. I did notice, however, that their containers were VERY DRY. I hadn't watered them in a couple of days and it showed. Guess I'm going to have to water those daily.

And the potatoes have all sprouted (some quicker than others) and are growing really quickly. Jim bought me some more dirt so I could start mounding around the stems. This needs to be done so the tubers don't see sunlight. If they do, it's not good - something about acid. Can't remember.

Making Cloches.

To keep the squirrels out, I made cloches using chicken wire. It took me about $8 and an hour to make six of them. They're kind of an eye sore but it's worth it to have piece of mind that the squirrels can't dig up my seedlings. (One year they totally ruined my potted basil.) They're pretty easy to make. All you need are wire cutters, leather gloves, and chicken wire. I can easily take them off to weed. When the plants get big enough, I'll toss the cloches and mulch around the stems using grass clippings and dried leaves.