Overgrown Plants

A big part of my new vegetable gardening experience is to see how much seeds I can get out of my plants this year and be able to use them next year! So despite the fact that my radish grew flowers instead of radishes :( and my spinach bolted before I could get a single big cookable leaf, I'm letting them all overgrow in hopes to harvest their seeds for next year :)

Top Left: Flowering Radishes

Top Right: Tall Cilantro

Bottom Left: Wild Rosemary

Bottom Right: Bolting Spinach

I do need to do more research on how to do that though. Yay Internet! Oh and i know the rosemary will keep growing... I do need to trim it down though. It just looks so ridiculous! LoL

More Seed Plantings

Being a first time gardener, I made a stupid mistake early on in the season. Instead of thinly sowing fast growing crops and making a packet of seeds last the whole season, I dumped whole packets into single rows which led to pulling out most of the overcrowded sprouts and not having any to replant later on... FAIL.

So I went to Lowe's and bought some more seeds. I will plant them more carefully and smartly this time around ;D

I sowed the radish and carrot seeds right by the existing radishes and carrots. I'm hoping the current radishes will shade the new sprouts and keep them cool til they grow bigger.

I bought two different types of spinach. I'm hoping to use one for salads and the other for cooking. Since my first batch of spinach bolted really quickly AND had a bad case of the leaf miners, this time around I decided to grow them in containers.

I sowed about two dozen of my salad spinach in the left container since I plan to cut them as baby spinach fairly often.

The big cooking spinach is planted in the individual pots. One plant per pot is my plan. That way I hope I can space them apart farther when they get bigger :) Hope this works out good! I shaded them off by putting my herb pots on the top shelf, so I'm hoping this keeps them from bolting so quickly as well. The dirt I used was MiracleGro Potting Soil.

Strawberry Harvest

My first 2 strawberries ready to be eaten :) I gave the riper one to Matt. Mine was a bit sour haha. But I see so many more strawberries almost ready to pick!

 

A gnome must have ran away from Michelle's fairy path :D He took refuge in my strawberry patch with his froggy friend.

New Garden Space Project Part 2

I got a lot done these past few days :)

I am running into a few problems though...

First problem is, I'm realizing that I'm working with AWFUL dirt. It's so sandy and full of small rocks and even big chunky stoney rocks. I'm guessing I'm going to need to add a LOT of organic matter to this dirt before I can grow anything in it next year.

My second issue is that pompous grass. I LOVE that plant so much, I really don't want to get rid of it. But it's so in the way. I wonder how damaging it would be to dig it up and replant it? Should I wait till late fall to do it? Or do I need to just dig it up and toss it away and just be happy that I have more gardening space? Oh the choices!! :(

All throughout the process though, I'm brainstorming trellis designs for this bed :) I want plants to scramble up trellises along the metal fence which would hopefully reflect light and heat onto the plants. I think I will plant different herbs all along the bottom bed. Oh more choices! :D

While I'm taking pictures of the new bed, I'll post pictures of my currently planted beds. They look nothing like all the bloggers' gardens. It still looks so empty :( Maybe I should have started earlier?

bed#1: My lettuce, spinach and tomato bed. I planted them in 3 vertical rows. Lettuce, Spinach, Lettuce. I ended up getting random poppings of lettuce and a cluster of spinach only in the middle. LOL wth? I just added the cherry tomato plants in the top. I hope they grow okay, they're growing very slowly.

 bed#2: Cucumbers in the top row, turnips in the next 2 rows, and broccoli in the bottom row. Everything is so small!

bed#3: Squash and zucchini in the top row, okra in the next row, soybeans in the middle, then radish and carrots on the bottom. The radishes are still tiny too. 

bed#4: Peas on top, beans in the middle, basil under it and cilantro in the bottom 2 rows.

bed#5: The corn corner. they get lots of sun and are growing very quickly :) 

New Garden Space Project Part 1

I've really been wanting to expand my garden lately. Currently I have three 3'x3' raised beds, one 2'x3' raised bed and a bit of space on the side of my house for my berry plants and all looks like this:

This is all at the side of my house. The farthest raised bed you see is my current spinach/lettuce bed. I used to keep my bunny Charlie in the space next to it and looks like this:

Ever since Charlie passed away over two months ago, this spot has been left untouched. I think I've finally finished grieving and ready to let go. So I've decided to take this all apart and use it as an extension of my vegetable garden. This spot actually gets much more sun than my raised beds since the house doesn't shade it during the morning and early afternoon. I think it'll be perfect for raspberries, tomatoes, and maybe even peppers next year. :) This is where my asparagus is popping up from, but I'll replant them elsewhere next year.... maybe.

I've been having difficulty reaching the far left corner of my spinach/lettuce bed so I decided I wanted a walkway between the wood bed and the stone bed. I also don't like to reach far at all, but still wanted lots of planting space so this was my solution:

Tadaa! I'll lay down rectangular stones to match the other walkways between my other beds.  I've always liked the look of two-leveled planting beds and this way i can just step over and stand on the top stones instead of reaching 3 feet toward the back end of the bed. I've only got the corner done, but I like how it's looking so far :) 

A Wonderful Surprise

Look at what was waiting for me in the garden this morning!

My first flower on my pea plants :D The plants are about a foot tall now. If they're flowering, does that mean they stop growing? I made such a tall teepee for them, it'll be a shame if they didn't reach the top.

In the neglected corner of my backyard...

My asparagus are growing like crazy! I discovered these in my backyard last year. I didn't pick one fast enough and it started turning into a tree.  I cut it down anyways though, I hope that was okay. I'm planning to dig it up during the winter and splitting them up for next year. Especially since they're growing from such a random spot, I want to actually have a "planned" spot for them in the garden :)

Okras

I planted my okras in front of my squash/zucchinis. The squash all have a trellis to climb for support but for my okras I'll probably put in stakes and tie them up. I've never actually even seen an okra plant in my life so I'm really excited to see how they grow. 

I'm cheating with the okra though. All the plants in my garden I grew from seed but my okra plants died when my boyfriend forgot to water them while I was gone :( So my mom graciously gave me some of her seedlings since I gave her the seeds to start with haha. One of my plants did survive though but it's teeny tiny. So a total of 6 plants. 5 hers, 1 mine. I hope mine does better ;P

Pests In My Garden

Find the difference between the two pictures!

 

Two days after transplanting my tomatoes into bigger pots, a robin came down and completely dug out two of them!

I don't know if she's trying to make a nest or feed her young, but she keeps coming back and attacking my garden. :( I've never had bird problems before but I'm wondering if I should put up netting, especially on my berry plants. There's a couple of robins that keeps coming into my garden as well as a bunch of chickadees. The chickadees don't seem like they do any harm to my garden at all but the robins are trampling and stealing my beautiful veggie plants!

I have PLENTY more pests in my garden :( My veggies are all gonna be eaten before I can get to them...

My raspberry bush. I'm guessing it's snails, but a couple of the leaves have big holes in them. Very minor damage.

My blueberry bush is getting COMPLETELY eaten up :( So many nibble bites on them! I caught two caterpillar looking things about a month ago when most of the damage happened, but something is recently eating it up again. I hope I find those munchers.

Leaf Miner eggs on my spinach. I hand pick the eggs every day which seems to help out a lot. I get 2 or 3 damaged leaves every day still though.

My lettuce that finally came up is getting attacked too. Maybe snails? Maybe the birds, since I saw a robin trampling over my spinach/lettuce bed earlier today. BOO.

Lovely Red Strawberry

Do you see what I see? :D

There's a LOT of buds and berries on my three tiny strawberry bushes. This is soooo exciting!! I've grown strawberries once a long time ago but they were teeny tiny ugly looking berries that didn't taste very good. This time I bought Ranier Strawberries which are supposed to yeild bigger berries. Looking great so far! The backside is still a bit green so I'm hoping it'll be edible in another day or two. YAY.

More To Harvest

I harvested a handful of baby spinach, parsley, cilantro, basil, and asparagus from my garden for my lunch today. The menu is spicy salmon, spinach salad, and a side of asparagus.

 

The flavors of the herbs are so amazing! It's so different compared to the dried kinds I'm used to from my counter top spice rack.

I can't wait to be able to harvest tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchinis, and all that good stuff. I'm still in shock at how much I'm actually able to grow outside! My black thumbs are apparently slowly turning green... :)