Summer is almost here

The garden is growing and summer has just about come upon us. (Though this time I don't have any photos, I'm enjoying my lazy weekend too much.)

Zoe's enjoyed patrolling the yard as well. A neighbor's feral cat that she takes care of has a litter of kittens. Sometimes they explore around our back porch, though they run and hide as soon as they see or hear us. Zoe's been mystified by their meows but hasn't yet seen them. As soon as she does I know she'll run after them trying to play.

"I love kitty cats, they're my favorite!" Zoë

 The "rows" are doing well. Today I discovered that the pumpkins somehow grew through one of the holes in the mini fence surrounding the compost. There's several feet of pumpkin vine and leaves hanging out on the compost. How we didn't notice this until now I'm not sure.

Sadly I'm 96% sure that the Silver Fir Tree tomato plant succumbed to end rot. Every tomato but one that I've picked off of it is either rotten in random spots and/or has funky mold looking white splotches inside the fruit. (Either way we've been unable to eat any of them except for one lone tomato.) As far as the rotting bits, I'm pretty sure it's because the planter we put it in is having problems draining. So not for lack of trying, we're going to scrap the Silver Fir Tree for this year, maybe we'll try again next year. Which speaking of, the Black Seaman isn't doing so well either. There is one large tomato and one baby tomato on it. The large tomato went from varying shades of green to rotten, there was no "just right" phase. I've left it for the bugs, let's see how the baby tomato turns out. I don't have high hopes for it either, as those are the only two tomatoes we've observed on that plant. Things seemed to be doing so well for a while and then both plants seem to have gone downhill rather quickly. The Ciudad Victoria currant tomato plant on the other hand is doing well, no edible tomatoes from it yet though.

On a much happier note we've now been able to eat TWO zucchinis from our garden (one today and one last weekend). I'd like to say they taste amazing and better than anything else I've ever had, but really they taste like regular zucchinis. Though they don't taste any different it's wonderful to eat something and know it came from your yard and all of your hard work! I can't wait for everything else to start bearing edible fruit, we'll be brimming with wonderful vegetable goodness! I can't wait to try crazy recipes using my harvests!

May Updates

The garden is growing and there is so much new every day in our little backyard garden. The squash/zucchini have gone from seedlings to plants with blooms and now growing plants with baby veggies growing on them! The eggplant has bloomed its very first beautiful purple flower. The sunflower has sprouted to over 6 feet tall with a flower over a foot in diameter (though sadly it's pointed in the opposite direction from view). Most amazingly the tomato plants have grown and their yellow blooms have now turned in to baby tomatoes. Today something amazing happened, we picked our very first tomato! This baby is so beautiful and red it may have actually over ripened on the vine. All the same we're going to enjoy eating it tonight! And last but not least (well maybe) the funky red bugs have turned from their ant like pupae form to adult (looking) Assassin bugs, and have now moved from the Silver Fir Tree to the Black Seaman.

Take a gander at some of the photos below and see how much our garden has grown!

Starting off strong, isn't she beautiful!

Yay for (good) bugs

Remember those bugs I was talking about? Well according to Native Nurseries, via my descriptions and then photos, those bugs are Assassin bug pupae. So any holes in the Silver Fir Tree's leaves aren't actually from those nasty looking bugs but are in fact from other bugs that the Assassin bugs are eating. They've reassured me twice now that these are good bugs, so I'm going to take their word for it. But I can't deny that I'm still a tiny bit nervous that somehow they'll turn out to be bad bugs and I'll regret having left them along so long because they'll have killed that plant. Sometimes you just can't help being a bit paranoid, even when you know your fears probably won't come true...

Gardening FAIL (and accidental success)

Epic Gardening Fail

Yesterday while getting a new dishwasher installed (yay! Thank goodness we have amazing landlords) I wanted to show off my growing garden. My landlord is a bit of a gardener himself and I knew he'd appreciate seeing how well things were doing. Sadly, he told me more or less what I knew myself: everything is crazy overcrowded. We'd replaced the dead seeds with seedlings in more or less the same spaces/spacing. So while we followed the instructions on planting the seeds correctly it's implied that once your seeds take off to seedlings you thin out and transplant to other places. Well that memo was basically lost on me. I had seen that the plants were growing rather large and I could only imagine how big they'd eventually get. So that afternoon while Zoë's Dad slept (and then so did Zoë) I took it upon myself to "fix" our rows or what I thought was "thinning them out".  There's a space perpendicular from the veggie garden/rows that I'd observed in full sun one morning. At the time I'd thought to myself "that's where we could put tomato plants in the ground next year if we wanted to try that." Well I decided it'd be a great area to transplant the extra plants. So I tore out weeds/grass, chopped the roots of the poisonous looking weed growing against the fence where the garden wold be, softened the dirt, enriched the soil with compost (that I had to manhandle to get out of the composter), dig holes in the new area, dig up the plants from their previous homes, and transplant them to their new spaces. Two hours later, I was sweaty and exhausted, but my new garden area was almost done. I worked so hard on this space/project. I don't know the last time I sweat so much or so hard. (And I didn't complain! I just took a mini break, got some water, and braced myself for more work.) It was a sight to be seen: old sports shorts, a tank top, sports bra, AND my new rain boots. I'll tell you what, I didn't worry at all about bugs getting on my feet! Now dirt everywhere else ... that I wasn't able to control or stop.

When Zoë's Dad woke up I proudly showed off the new area (that he'd previously said wasn't needed and didn't want to create). It was about 2 and the fence shaded the ENTIRE area. That's right, my new veggie garden was in complete shade at 2pm and there was nothing I could do about it! I realized instantaneously that all of that work was for nothing. Apparently that space gets sun in the morning and shade (from the fence) in the afternoon. I can't test this theory just yet because I can't even see the sun today. *sigh*

Tomato Updates

While outside taking photos of my epic fail of a secondary veggie garden I figured I'd take photos to have updates for the rest of the garden. Every day (unless the forecast includes rain) I water the plants and I've started fertilizing them with organic fertilizer. Okay I've fertilized the tomatoes twice and the veggies once, but I plan on continuing to fertilize them once or twice a month, as the package instructs). Well the Ciudad Victoria currant tomatoes are growing like gangbusters!