Yummy Garden Goodies

Yum, the garden has been great.  Some of the tomato plants are at the end of their lives.  I have others that will start producing soon.  We love those little tomatoes.  Lots of salads going on. Lets see now if my other things come up soon.  

Fresh Veggies

I went out today after being away the weekend and look at all I picked. Click on the picture to see it all better. If you notice I have some green beans. Now there were only two left of the purple kind. Yes, purple green beans. We had to try that. When you cook them they go from purple to green. They tasted the same as the others and it was neat to see them. We are having salad and zucchini's tonight. We will also have some tiny carrots with sour cream dip. Yum!! The boys are excited about eating our own veggies. So how are your gardens?

Another Garden Update

Just wanted to show you an update on our garden. Can't wait to try that cantaloupe. Those little tomatoes are yellow and they are just about ready. Little salad yellow tomatoes that are tasty. I'm planting some more seeds of corn because these are almost ready. That zucchini is almost ready to eat.



Hope it rains today so I don't have to water but probably have to go out there with the hose. I can still hope for rain, right? Don't forget to click on the pictures to see them better.

A Work in Progress

I thought I would share some pictures of our garden. It is just growing and growing. Soon we will eat us some corn and cucumbers. Today I'm making some green beans. I planted pole and bush but I also found some purple green beans. The purple green beans are supposed to turn green when you cook them. It should be interesting to see how they taste.

We will soon have bell peppers too. The tomato plants have a ton of tomatoes but still have to mature. YUM!! Just thinking about it all is making me hungry.

Enjoy the pictures of the progress of our garden.

Our Work is Paying Off

Our first productive garden in the making. The boys promised to help make 2 squares to start with and help keep them also. In return for helping I promised to help them with getting a chicken coop started. I thought I would be the only one out there tending the garden but they really want chickens.


This was a real hands on experience for them. They helped in preparing the squares. We got out the level, hammer and screws. I let them use the screw drill. I love power tools but I was able to share with them. LOL

We read two books. Both by Mel Bartholomew called Square Foot Gardening and The New Square Foot Gardening. I just had to go over both books. It had such good information in both. While mixing our soil medium we talked about peat moss, compost and vermiculite. They loved the mixing part. What boy doesn't like playing in dirt?

After getting it all ready we planted. This was the best part. We had our squares done and we planted. We all just sat back, watered and waited.

We had sightings of our veggies. Little things popping up from the ground. This time around we just watched as each seed popped out of the soil all curled up and then opened up with one then two leaves. They were excited as they eagerly watched every day at what else might pop up from one day to the next.


Then we went on a last minute vacation. Can you imagine being away from your garden for two weeks. I made arrangements with my brother and nephew who live next door to come over and water while we were gone so imagine every ones surprise when we got back and saw our garden.

Our two squares are filling in nicely. The boys promised to help prepare two more squares sometime soon.

I asked my middle son what each plant was just by looking at it now and he identified just about every plant in the garden. They all can't wait to enjoy their hard work when we sit down at the table.

They also added the garden to their nature journal.

How does my garden grown?

Driving back home we had to do a little stop. Can you see why? I've seen some bluebonnets in my day but this was incredible. We stopped on the side of the road and I could not believe the smell. It was such a sweet smell. Like I said we have seen some but not in this amount and not that you could smell just by standing there.


It was truly amazing to see and smell this. The bluebonnet is the Texas flower and I think it is a beautiful flower. If you drive along the highways of Texas, down south anyway, you will see lots of wildflowers including the bluebonnet. This makes the drive a pleasant one.

Now that we are home after two weeks being gone we came home to an amazing garden. Our garden has grown so much. We have corn, yellow squash, lettuce, bell pepper plants and green beans in one box. The corn was small when we left but now it is big.

We also have carrots. Can you see them in the picture? There is also some spinach. We will be making some good salads. Yum, can't wait.

We did two 4x4 squares this time around but we might get 2 more ready for our late season planting. Living down south we don't have much winter time so it will be great to have plenty of fresh veggies.

What do you think of my garden? This is the first time we have had a garden that it has gotten so big and has been so easy to do. We are having fun but it will be nicer when we start eating our labor.

Waiting on Mother Nature

Are you wondering what I'm waiting for? We have been in drought conditions for a long time. It's hard not to get any rain. No rain water to fill the buckets at all. Still all our hard work is paying off. Our garden is starting to pop up. Look at our veggies.

Can you see our green beans? How neat is that. The last picture is our lettuce popping up.

So we got our hands dirty and did a lot of work to get it all done then we planted. Now the learning continues as our hard work pays off. We have all learned a lot about square foot gardening and how close or what to plant in a square. We also learned about the soils and what veggies to plant during different times of the year.

The learning will continue.....

Update: We got a little over an inch of rain! Finally some rain.

Gardening

I got it done. Well, at least the upside down part. I am planning on putting herbs on the top part of this neat thing I found. Actually, hubby saw it all done and suggested I get another one. YIPPEEEE!!!

I have my squares done too. Even the one foot square slats are down. I have some things planted too. I have different varieties of tomato. Some my brother from next door had some extras so I got some from him. He gave me a tomato called Mr. Stripy. That should be interesting. I am starting some green beans and peas from seed. I have a few more packets to start.

Oh, yes, I also got that bell pepper plant into its square. An old friend had her square foot boxes and they always had lots of veggies so I've been wanting to make my own for a while. I'm glad the kids helped me to get it done now.

I am also trying some strawberries in containers. We have so many ants on our land that I want to try it this way instead of in the ground. Let's see if this is better.

I will slowly be adding some blocks to the paths. Who

knows I might try something else

Although the last picture is not about gardening I had to post it. Today is the first day this year that the hummingbirds came back. I only got this good picture. It was dark already and thru the window but it's a hummingbird.

I'm all upside down

I needed more compost today and since it is spring break here for public school kids we took the week off. Although, I still consider this school but, shhhhh! The kids had their cousin spend the night. They stayed up way to late watching a movie. So after he left it was time to hit the town. I paid bills. (not fun) Then came the fun part. It was garden stuff time. I had gone to Sam's and had seen this neat contraption. I figured it would be easier for me to get some hanging baskets and the hooks to drill somewhere. I had gotten only two baskets with the hooks and it was half the price of this thing which I could put anywhere. So guess what I got?

I will be working on getting it all set up and filled up tomorrow. Can you tell I am excited about this. Not only do I have two 4x4 squares for gardening but also this thing. I already have some tomato plants and some bell pepper to get started. I have to fill the bottom part with sand first before I do anything else. I can't wait to get started tomorrow. It got a little chilly this evening and I just couldn't get myself to go out there and work. I'm sure tomorrow it will be back up to the 80's. Can't wait. I'll take some pictures and post after we (yes, boys too) get it set up and planted.

Square Foot Gardening

We started it already. Our garden is started. I have two squares. I need a little more compost for the second square and to get the strips to make the one foot squares.

This first picture the boys helped me take off all the grass. That was a lot of work. Of course, we stopped and took a small water break. Then we came back and finished it off. We mixed the compost, peat moss and vermiculite and filled the squares. Soon we will add our plants and on some squares we will be adding seeds.

As we added the different ingredients we talked about them. Vermiculite is a rock that is heated until it pops like popcorn and you get the end result that you can put in the garden. We also talked about compost and that not all bags are equal. In the book All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew he mentioned that we should have around 6 different brands of compost and mix them all to end up with a good compost mix. I was like...what??? It actually makes sense since some of these companies make compost out of different materials. Some use manure some leaves and other materials.

We have a good blend of compost in our garden. Tomorrow we will continue with the garden and get ready to plant before the rain comes which is supposed to be this weekend. Did I mention that I will be sore?

My, Oh My! Amazing Things We Find

So are you wondering what those little round things are? hehehehehe Well, read on to find out. Yesterday, my brother called to tell me what he saw in his garden.

It was big, mushy, gushy and had a horn looking thing on one end. As you can see on this next picture it is long. It is about 3 1/2 inches long.

By the way, that horn looking thing is on the end part. If you click on those pictures you will see it closer. There are little dots on the sides that look like eyes.

So are you wondering what it is? If you look on this site you will see two different kinds depending on the color of that horn looking thing. This one has a red end so it's a tobacco hornworm.

What will it become? It will be a sphinx moth sometimes called a hummingbird or hawk moth. The only thing is that I have to feed this thing for about a month or so and then it will go into a pupa. You could never imagine the amount of poop this thing creates. It is eating the green tomato and I think that if I scoop up all that poo that it would be at least half that tomato. Ok, so you didn't really want to know that. hehehe Let's see how long this thing will take to go to the next stage in life.

I guess marigolds should be planted into my brothers garden next year. Marigolds are a repellent plant for this. We learn something every time we go outdoors.

Do you remember a while back on this post that I mentioned that we were going to try to grow some vegetables in kiddie pools?
Well we did but all my things died. The reason.....they were pot bound by the time we put them in the pool. So we had given up. Then my brother started a garden and pulled some cucumbers up because they were overcrowded at his garden. He brought them to me and he put them in my little kiddie pool.

So guess what is growing on our plant in October. I plan on taking good care of these plants and see how many cucumbers we can get before we get a freeze. Just so you know we don't get many freezes but it is usually enough to kill everything.

Next year I plan on the larger pools which are not only larger but deeper than these little ones. I hope it works out better.

Our Experiment

This was what we finally started today. I'm still working on our weeds in the background but a little at a time will get us there. So what are we doing with those kiddie pools? Well, a friend of mine showed me this site and the idea grew from that time. It was just an idea because it was too cold to start the real thing till now. We've been fixing our flower beds and getting our garden ready. It is spring here.

I'll let you know the progress of our garden as time goes by. It will be exciting to see how this works out for us.

What are we doing?

It's February and we are already getting our garden started. We will have a little chilly weather tomorrow night but I guess for some of you its tee-shirt weather.

A friend and I were talking about starting a garden. I've always wanted to but our dirt is so bad and I don't like and don't have much time to work on a garden like that. Then she told me of something she wanted to do and thought it was a perfect idea for our garden. This is what we are going to do for our garden. What a great container garden idea, don't you think? Thanks Nancy for this idea.

We started with seeds and they look like they want to go outside already.
Do you see our green beans? They are the tallest.
We have to turn our little plants around, don't you think? I'll keep you up to date on how our gardening is going. Hope we can get it all set up and planted soon.