First Salad

Last week, I had the best salad of my life and there wasn't even that much in it. Jonaya and I picked some of the leaf lettuce that we have been growing. We picked a few radishes to stick in there, but that was for John. He is the only one in the family who likes radishes. We also picked some parsley to add some more flavor since the other vegetables aren't even close to being ready.



As you can see here, we didn't pick very much, but we had enough for the family to have a bowl full. We just spritzed it with our favorite salad dressing and went to town. I am so proud of my little salad. I plan on eating a whole lot of it this summer.

We have also planted some more cucumber in containers. By mid-summer it should be growing out of our ears. We also have 15 pots of squash and 3 big containess with 5 pepper plants in each. The carrots and onions are starting to poke through the ground.

We also transplanted the tomatoes into bigger pots and took them out of the homemade newspaper pots. They aren't growing very fast, so we moved them away from the house closer to the garden.

Our next major garden project is setting up a green house, so that we can have plants growing all year long.

That is all that I have to share for now.

It's Finally That Time Pt 2

Continuing from where I left, we are still in the back yard.

This is where we are going to put the carrots and onions. We filled most of it with compost. Now we are just waiting to buy some top soil. A friend gave us this raised bed, so we wanted to put it to good use.

Here is the left side of the garden. The first row are some seed potatoes that we planted. It is already starting to grow through the ground. Behind that towards the back, we planted some leeks.

I'm sorry that this side came out a little blurry. In these rows we have planted cabbage, cucumber, corn, and peas. We forgot to buy beans, so that still has to go in.

In this picture, you are probably thinking...what in the world? We have more potatoes under the hay. We read somewhere that you can plant potato above ground. as it grows, just keep covering it with hay. We had tried it last year and weren't successful, so we wanted to give it one more try.

Here is just part of our compost pile. It should be ready to use in our fall garden.

Now, we can move to the front of the house. That is all I have as far as food goes.

The first picture is what the front of the house looks like now. On the right is what it looked like when we first moved in. We cut down all of the overgrown holly bushes. The electric company cam and cut down the tree. we have plans to put strawberries in from of the house, but it is almost too late now. Yeah, I know and John needs to cut the grass again. I will get him on it.

I am growing Chinese lantern in the hanging basket. There is a small pot right below that that is growing marigolds. You can also really see how much the grass needs to be cut.

I'm almost done, I promise.

On each side of the door, I have alyssum around the outside edge and morning glory in the middle. That is what that butterfly looking leaf is.

Then on each side of the porch, I have pots with African violets starting to grow in.

See, I told you that I was almost done. That is it for now. I hope you enjoyed the tour.

It's Finally That Time Pt 1

Last year I discovered my new love for gardening. I never thought that it would be something that I would enjoy. I figured that maybe I would set a flower pot out here and there and that would be the extent of it.

Since the weather has finally warmed up, we have been busy trying to get the soil ready for planting. One of my long term goals is to feed my family from the garden 90% of the time. Since we has so much rain towards the end of the summer last year, we planted some of our stuff in containers.



There is thyme and dill growing in this pot. It is set out by the back door. Things are starting to come up, but as you can see it will still be a while.

The big black thing is actually a spool from cable wire. Pretty cool, huh? We have one on each side of the patio with lettuce and rosemary. I can't wait to taste those yummy summer salads. The small pot in the front is last years catnip, that grew back. Right behind in will be oregano. The pot all the way to the left is also from last year. That has dill, parsley and basil.



Ok, let's see if I can remember what I have here. The first two pots are turnips, the next two are radishes, and the last two black ones are beets. The brown pot has lavender that I inherited, but I'm not sure that it is going to make it. Then you can see the rest of my lettuce and rosemary.

This, here is four trays of starter tomatoes. We made the little pots out of newspaper, so when we transplant it to the garden it will be biodegradable. I don't remember the order, but I will tell you what we have. One tray is just regular hybrids. Then we have some cherry tomatoes. Another tray is a grape tomato that we ordered from Burpees. If you eat it at room temperature, it tastes like a tomato, but when you put the same tomato in the fridge it will taste like grapes, cold. I can't wait to try those. The last tray has another grape tomato that has a hint of honey. Those are called honeybunches.

I have so much more to share with you, so I will be back by the end of the week. I hope that I can inspire you to be self sustaining and grow some of your own food.

Garden Update 7/30

We haven't been doing much in the garden during these super summer hot days. I'm already looking forward to the cooler months.

I have lots of good and bad news from what has been happening in the last couple of weeks.

I was so excited because we had lots of cantaloupe growing. Every time I looked at it I was already tasting it...LOL

This photo was taken a couple of weeks ago, when we first got back from vacation. It is actually about the size of a soft ball now. We were out there yesterday and it looks like something is getting the plants itself. They are turning brown and have a bunch of holes in the leaves.

This is my Rose of Sharon that I got off of Freecycle when I first moved in. It has blooms! I wasn't sure if it would bloom or not after transferring it and they look kind of spindly. We plan on pruning it in the fall, so it should look better next year.

This is a picture of one of three.







When we got back from our trip, we also found our first squash. I'm so happy that I found out that they bloom twice before it produces the vegetables, otherwise I would have thought that we killed them.

The tomatoes are still getting ripe. We have harvested a few and they were so tasty. Ian did get a little excited one day and picked some green ones, so we had fried green tomatoes one night. They were delicious!!

I have picked to good messes of beans. My husband sauteed them with some sesame oil. They are the best beans that I have had in my life.

Time for some more bad news. We didn't get very much corn before it just all turned brown. I wish we got more because the few ears that we did get was the sweetest corn that I have ever had in my life.

We planted a whole row of pumpkin to be ready for Halloween. We have a killer pumpkin butter recipe, too.

Look what else we made! Those are our own pickles. We combined several different recipes into one. I'm not a big pickle eater and those are good. I think we should go into business...LOL

We had a lot of cucumber and the kids weren't eating them fast enough, anymore.

That about covers it for this week. For more gardens visit Stephanie at A High and Noble Calling.

Tons of New Plants

I am so excited! I have lots of great new plants to share. I did a little shopping this weekend.

Here is my front porch.

This is just a shot of the left side, I also have pots on the right. It’s all the same, though. The blue pot is delphinium. It has these pretty lilac blooms. All of the small pots around it is wildflowers. I had gotten a Mother’s Day card, last year, that you can plant.

Last night, we had some dinner guest and they brought presents. Aside from the 3 bottle of home made wine, we got a bamboo plant, turkey fig, and a peanut plant. How cool it that? I will get pictures of them once they are planted. Well, the bamboo is staying potted. I don’t want it taking over my yard. Those are all on the front porch right now, too.

I have also added some pots to the back patio.

In the big round pot are my herbs. I have dill, parsley and basil. There was a fourth herb, but I don’t remember what is was and it didn’t grow.

The small round pot to the left has blue daze in it. Then the second one has two more pepper plants that grew by accident. The third is catnip that is about to bloom. Then in the square pot I have vinca, portulaca (the pink one) and a marigold.

The rest of the garden is doing great! I’m still harvesting cucumbers about every other day. I get between 7 and 9. I have more tomatoes starting to grow. There are a few beans that I need to go harvest today. Oh, and the corn has tassels!

I learned something from my friends, last night. I thought something was wrong with my zucchini and squash. They are blooming and then the blooms just fall off. Those are male blooms. Then it will bloom again, with the females and that will be my vegetables. Who knew?

I have no idea what I will get into next week, but I’m excited to get outside and do more gardening.

How does your garden grow?

Yay, Harvest Time!!

I have been wanting to post since early in the week. I'm trying not to post updates more than once a week, so that my blog isn't consumed by my gardening, like a weed...LOL. I'm sure that is plenty of excitement.

Ok, Sunday when we got home from church I had the kids change and we all went out to work in the garden. You saw the hot mess it was in in my post a couple of weeks ago.

After all of the rain, I had to go weed and my husband told me to "hill it." I got all of the weeding done. Well, most of it. I gave Jonaya the job of hand weeding the carrots and she did such a wonderful job. I told her that she can have that job for the rest of the summer. Once I hilled everything, it seemed like the plants were standing at attention immediately. That made such a huge difference.

We did lose most of the row of carrots, all but 2 bean plants, and we are not sure about the peas yet. I think they may recover. So, John and the kids planted more of all three. I was in the house baking.

The Discovery:

John called me outside and he showed me this cute little tomato, starting to grow.

Here it is here.

then we went to look at he cucumbers and John showed me this puny one starting to grow. Then I found this one.

After John left for work, I went to do some more hand weeding. The 2 bean plants that we had left had grass growing around them. That is when I discovered this.

So today was the day we got to pick out first harvest. We picked 6 cucumbers at lunchtime. Jonaya was so cute. She was ready to go and get them for breakfast. Here we are getting our first cucumbers.

We just cut it up with some vinegar and added some fresh dill (from the garden) to it. It was the best cucumber that I ever had. I can't wait to get more.

By the way, we did have a down pour yesterday evening and "hilling" the plants did wonders. Everything is all above water!

There's Hope!!

I am so happy! I am starting to get blooms. So far, I have zucchini and cucumbers blooming. At this point, I will be ecstatic to get anything out of the garden after the way it looking a week ago.

This is the cucumbers!

Here is the zucchini.

Since I live in the south, there is still time to replant the beans and peas. We plan on doing that on Sunday. John has has a crazy week at work, but that is another post.

I also, decided why wait on a container garden. I hope to put a few things on my back patio in the next couple of weeks. We all know that things never go as planned, though.

Garden Update 5/28

I was so proud of what we had accomplished just a week ago. Now, I'm afraid that we may not get much of anything this year. We have gotten so much rain that the soil couldn't keep up. When you walk out there you are ankle deep in mud. My husband, John tried to dig trenches. It looked like things were drying up and then it rained again. We are supposed to get more rain today.

So far, we have lost a few tomato plants, some zucchini and most of the beans. We will put down another row of bean this weekend and see what we can get out of that.

This is my first garden, so I really hope that it will be a success. I guess you live and learn. Next year I want to put some in containers, Like Stephanie's. That is so much more creative and decorative. I still plan on putting stuff int he ground. I just want to enhance it next year.

Playing in The Dirt

This was our garden a few weeks ago (about 1 month) when we first had it tilled. We were so excited because the soil was so rich and it has the perfect combination of dirt and sand.

We rushed out and bought seeds, so we could get them in the ground. We did already have some tomatoes, cabbage, and peppers growing in one of those plastic green houses that you buy at Wal-mart.

I had planned on the gardening being part of Jonaya's summer school curriculum. It seems as though she has already lost interest. I guess she didn't realize how much work was going to be involved. I'm hoping when it's time to harvest she will regain interest.



This picture was taken today. I spent the whole morning weeding. I never realized how much I would enjoy being out there. I get some great prayer time just being out there playing in the dirt and seeing how rich we are with all that we have.

We are growing tomatoes, zucchini, squash, watermelon, cantaloupe, carrots, green beans, corn, cabbage, peppers, peas, and cucumber. If we are lucky, we may even have garlic. Those were put in the ground too late, though. Oh, there are potatoes, too. That is another experiment. Those aren't in the actual garden. They are off to the right of the garden.

I'm impressed with what has grown so far. I don't have any blooms yet. I'm excited to go into the next stage of gardening.

This is my first garden. I think another reason that I'm enjoying it so much is because I'm finally putting down some roots.

We have had a hard time keep Ian out of there. He will go in and just walk on the plants. I tried to show him where to walk and it's just not working. I finally gave up. I'm so thankful that we can have a garden and we have planted more than our family can eat, so why get upset over a few trampled on plants. That is part of the joys of having kids.