Garden Update #4

Wow, it's been awhile! I've been away on business and as you can tell, the hubby did not take care of the garden like he was supposed to. :( Regardless, I'm going to try my best to bring it back....I'm leaning towards some type of organic fertilizer and following up with some coffee grounds.

Here is the squash, zuchinni, and potatoes. They are probably struggling the most...


Here are the eggplants in box #3. Not getting huge, but they do have three or four little ehhplants on them.


Here is on of the tiny baby eggplants! Cannot wait to make these into something delicious!

I've discovered two squash plants have come up in box #3. Only one little squash so far though (although it looks an awful lot like a pumpkin to me)???

And here is the green beans....struggling without water.

Here is all of box #3.

Planted red onions in box #2. These seem to be doing really well. I have no idea when they are "ready" though, hmmm????

And this I believe is garlic. It's either supposed to do this, or it's dead and I look like a fool! Ha!

And on to box #3....

Here are my little banana peppers. Not getting very big...

And one loan bell pepper. Not sure if this tiny plant can hold it much longer though...

And we've got quite a few cucumbers growing despite how bad the plant looks.

Wow....it's been awhile huh?

Garden Update #3

The garden is amazing me with how quickly last weekends seeds sprouted and how fast everything else has been growing. I guess the extreme heat, humidity, and a good nightly watering have been doing them good. And, to my own amazement, I've shocked my husband who thought this whole garden thing was going to be a waste of time and money. ;P So far I've only had four squares of strawberries (from the root seeds?) not come up and one square of cucumbers which I'm out of. But other than that, every single thing has sprouted and is going strong so far.


The strawberry bucket hasn't seen much growth yet, especailly compared to everything else in the past week, so I decided to move it to a more sunny spot. We'll see if that helps it take off.

Both the zuchinni and the squash sprouted and as you can tell, they are doing phenominal considering I planted them last Sunday!

And a few of the potatoes finally sprouted yesterday! Woohoo! I was a little worried how these would turn out.

Here are the sugar pumpkins I planted up against the house, all four plants have tiny sprouts.

And the two watermelon plants!

And the two jack'o lantern pumpkin plants!

This is kind of a hodge poge area where I tossed extra seelings I had, and then forgot to mark, but I think there is a broccoli plants here and the other is a brussle sprout plant. ;P

And my four melon plants are strewn about in the landscape.

Here's a overall view of my three square foot raised beds.

Box #1 is still going strong. The peas are flowering like crazy, so from what I read, that meas we should be harvesting sugar snap peas in just about a week. We also did our first harvest of lettuce and spinach this week. I made homeade ranch dressing to go over it using chives from the garden and Todd proclaimed it the best ranch he's ever tasted in his whole life! ;P We had some spinach in a pasta dish, but I'm making spinach strawberry salad tomorrow, so I'm super excited. The spinach isn't at it's peak like it was about two weeks ago, but thankfully it's still as good as the stuff from the super market, so we'll use it up while we still can! The dill plant is going crazy! I cannot think of enough dishes to use that all up! Anyone know if I should just trim it back?

Box #2 is just a steady grower. It's mainly plants that were supposed to be planted earlier in the season, before the last frost, but the first plants got ate by rabbits, so this is the second go around. No heads on anything yet though, so we'll see. I also have a giant mystery plant in the middle. I seriously have no idea what it is, haha!

Bed #3 is finally picking up too. My garden plan got a little messed up, so there is a mumble jumble of beans, carrots, lettuce, marigolds, and a zuchinni plant in the north part, but I have the south part under control. ;P The beans I planted last weekend really started strong, the eggplants are getting huge, and the new square of carrots, along with the new square of green onions all have tiny little sprouts starting.

Haha....and while this is not my garden, this is our neighbors, these are "our" tomato and pepper plants that got planted this weekend. Our neighbors just enjoy gardening and no longer can their produce, so they are very generous with what they drop off on our front porch. Not only that, but they remind us almost on a daily basis to come pick and pick away. They only have a few eggplant and zuchinni plants, but they grow about thirty varieties of peppers and tomatoes around their house and nestled in their landscape. So needless to say, this is why I don't grow a single pepper or tomato plant! And why I'm shooting a picture of it and watching it's progress, hehe!

Garden Update #2

I'm 99% done with the garden and all it's associated projects. I decided to wait for the most humid and hot day of the year so far....go figure! But Todd and the kids had a blast getting the inflatable pool, sprinkler, squirt guns and slip and slid out while I was doing it, so at least it kept me a little cool every time I got srayed or a bucket of water dumped on my head!

Here is the three raised beds as of 2pm! We added two trellises to the 4'x4' boxes and added chicken wire around the 3'x6' box since rabbits ate all my plants in that bed only!


This is box #1. The Amish snap peas are doing great! I had a really hard time getting the trellis in between the middle, but they were happy once I started working them up the trellis! The spinach and lettuce are also in DESPERATE need of being picked over. I've got two salad on the dinner menu this week and two pasta dishes for the spinach...so hopefully that should keep them manageable!


This is box #2. I was lucky enough to find some pretty large cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, and brussel sprout plants at Meijer this weekend for cheap, so I figured why not. Well try to grow them and see what happens.We also added leftover chicken wire from the compost pile around the bed to keep the rabbits from coming back and having another feast!


This is box #3. The pole beans are going crazy! I also noticed quit a bit of the romaine is coming up as well as the carrots. The eggplant has also gone crazy and the leaves are getting huge compared to the tiny little seedlings we planted just a few weeks ago!

As for the structures, here is a picture of the whole trellis. We actually found out Lowes carries cement remesh panels, which are much cheaper than the 100' roll others use. The panel is 3 1/2' x 7' for only $6.39. These panels fit perfectly inside the beds and then we attached them to t-stakes with zip ties.

This is a good picture of the chicken wire we placed around bed #2 to keep the rabits out. The hardest part was keeping the top of the chicken wire from bowing out, so we needed lots of stakes. Thankfully we found some wood stakes in the shed as well as a few scrap pieces from the deck railing. May not be pretty, but it works great!

I also didn't plan out my garden before ordering seeds, so I already had watermelon seeds as well as pie pumpkins and jack o'lanterns. So it wasn't until I planned it out that I realized there was no way I'd have room for these in the raised beds. So after thinking it over, I decided what the heck, I threw some dying herbs in our beds last year and they did great, so why not try a few plants in there was well. I also picked up a few melons at Meijers last night as well. So below are the freshly planted melon seedlings.

Along the pack of the house, we put in the watermelons and sugar pie pumpkins. I also threw in an extra brussel sprout plant and extra broccoli I had.

And over here is the pumpkins. Currently they are marked with tiny toothpicks so I know where to water, but this is still on my to-so list....figure out a way of marking all of my plants. ;P

This is our potato bin. The "seeds" came in a variety pack I bought with onions, strawberries, and asparagus, so I figured I'd give them a try. I read online that they could be grown in a trashcan, so I figured, why not try a plastic bin I already had in the basement. So we cleaned it out really good and drilled several holes in the bottom for drainage.

I also ordered zuchinni and squash plants without really looking into how they can be grown in a square foot garden. After finding out how much room they really need, I decided to try container gardening for these. And wanting to keep cost down, I figured I'd try using some galvanized tubs I had leftover from our wedding 5 years ago! Again, we cleaned them up and drilled holes in the bottom. Again, not finished just yet though. We have an old wood ladder under the deck which I'm going to make into a trellis for these.

And last but not least, another idea I saw online was growing strawberries in a bucket. I was able to get the bucket for just $2.99 at Home Depot (as if you can't tell ;P). I then bought a 6 pk of strawberry plants. Tod used his 1" spade drill bit and made 16 or so holes in the bucket. I then placed the 6 plants inside the bucket, weaving the vines out through the holes and filling it up with compost as we went. I'm hoping we have lots of strawberries in another month or so!

We're super excited about the progress we've made so far and all the work we've put into it. The ony thing left we have to do, that I didn't mention earlier is a small herb garden on the deck. I want to grow some basil, cilantro, and parsley in a 3 basket planter. Hopefully I'll get around to that one night this week!