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!  

Veggie Garden: Take 2

Garden 2.0
It was somewhat inevitable, but basically all of the seeds we planted a few weeks ago did not take off. I repeat, the only sprouts of green from our labors of love rows were the pumpkins. And while we're thrilled the pumpkins took off (at least we did something right *happy dance*) that was the one we wanted the least, if only because we can't/won't use that until the end of winter! {cue the dramatic music, you know the "dun dun dunnnnnnnn"}

Trying not to hang my head in shame (my first attempt at being a gardener was not a success, though I never really thought it would be) we went to fix the "situation". So we went to Native Nurseries (for what seems like the 50th trip this spring already, but clearly isn't) and bought some great looking seedlings: watermelon, croon neck summer squash, baby bush zucchini, yellow bell peppers, sweet basil, Genovese basil (I don't know what the difference between the two is but I guess we'll find out), and white lightening eggplant (that's the only kind they had and while I'd wanted a Japanese variety I figured whatever Native Nurseries had for sale would be a really great variety). 

"Pansy is my favorite!" -Zoë  (As in Pansy the dog at Native Nurseries. Who Zoë goes on a hunt for every time she's there. They don't play, they sort of sniff each other and then Pansy walks away, probably thinking "that little thing is crazy!" All the same, Zoë's favorite is another dog, whenever she gets the opportunity.)

We tried to stay rather true to the original garden, in actual plants and location. That way if by some miracle the seeds do take off (what they took a vacation to the Caribbean and will come back later?) we'll just have extras of things. That's a much better scenario than if we'd gone completely different than the original plan, could you imagine: "Honey, I think that's a cucumber growing in between the watermelon!" Of course I couldn't help but deviate a bit, though I think it's perfectly acceptable for zucchini and squash to mingle in the garden and well given the chance I just had to try to growing my own bell peppers.

A few grueling hours in the garden (again) and we've got a second version of the garden. This time though there's green growth all around! And funny enough the pumpkins (the only seeds that took) are about the same size as the seedlings we bought! I'm not sure if that's funny funny ("haha") or funny sad.....