Garden Progress

We've been making slow progress on our gardening efforts around here. First of all, it's a lot more work to dig a small plot of dirt than you'd think. Also, it takes a lot more dirt to fill a space than you'd think. Finally, whoever said that you can save money by growing your own fruits and veggies was on crack. This stuff is expensive! I can't tell you how many freaking bags of compost we've bought so far. I lost track.

But, things are starting to come together. Both of my varieties of tomatoes have sprouted in their little peat pellets. The back lawn is looking more green than brown, as is the front. And, we finally have some beds completed!

I think this one is my favorite right now. The house across the street from us is vacant (who wants to come be my neighbor???) and they had some workers in totally gutting it. They pulled out carpet, cabinets, appliances - everything - and replaced them. They also pulled out bushes and trees in both the front and back yards. They dug up the front lawn and laid fresh sod. They painted the house on the outside, and probably on the inside too. There was a dumpster in that driveway every day for almost two weeks!

Well, one day I was outside and I was watching them throw this cabinetry in the dumpster and was thinking what a shame it was. I mean, you can donate that stuff to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, you know? Then I saw they were throwing away those scallopped brick garden edgers. A ton of them. As the workers threw them in the dumpster I felt myself being disgusted by the waste and even complained about it to my husband, who was telecommuting that day.

Well, after they took that load to, presumably, the dump, I noticed that they had started to add these retaining wall bricks to the pile of trash in the driveway. I was horrified - those things are not cheap! I know because I had originally wanted to make my raised beds with them but they were cost prohibitive at $2 each. Quickly my brain began to work and I bravely went and sent my husband over there to ask if we could have them since they were going to just throw them out. They said we could have them! We scored 26 of them for free. Kick butt!

I hand painted the sign on a scrap of wood I had in my craft room. I love how bright and happy it looks out there. There are two varieties of pumpkins planted in that bed. It's going to look so nice when the vines start to grow!

This is my vegetable bed. Since the retaining wall would have been so expensive to do in an area this big, we decided to go with two raised bed kits from Lowe's. My husband put them together after we cleared the gravel from the area. The ground inside got broken up a bit then mixed with compost and garden soil. This bed will hold onions, carrots, zucchini, and my tomatoes when they are big enough to be transplanted. It's right outside my craft room window so I can admire it and bang on the window to scare away birds if need be.

Here are all my herbs in pots along the edge of the patio. The ones I started from seed haven't sprouted yet. There are about six strawberries growing though!

Oh, what's the muddy mess in the background?

The thorn in my gardening side. Remember my potager? This was to be the first bed I completed, and the biggest containing lettuces and herbs. I read in my gardening book those sorts of things grow well in our soil so I decided to just dig up the ground and plant them directly in there. Well, my husband and I were taking turns digging when he got a little over zealous, went a little too deep, and hit a freaking sprinkler line!!!

We had to quickly shut off the water while we pondered what to do. Luckily, when the landscapers came out two days later they said it wasn't a big deal and repaired it. Of course, when we went to turn the water back on another hose started to leak! I know that hose was not leaking before we shut off the water because it was spraying in a huge arc across the grass. There's kind of no way to miss that, you know? So as of right now, we don't know how that one happened. It's just a small puncture but my husband thinks he can fix it.

At this rate that bed will NEVER be done. To think, we started it first!

Garden Progress 4/27/11

This is a photo of my garden a week ago.

This is a photo of my garden today.

I know it may not look terribly impressive, but it is to me!

The zucchini plants are now bigger than my dog! Granted my dog isn't very big, but you get the idea. The dogs are actually very good about staying out of these areas. I just posed her there for this photo. Notice that the carrots at her feet are looking more carroty?

The spinach is looking like spinach as well.

On the other side, the arugula is growing nicely. I'm not 100% sure about the onions though.

The pumpkins grow a lot slower than the zucchini. I thought they would be similar since they are both squash but I guess not. The heirloom ones on the left are super slow growers. I had one just barely sprout yesterday and these were planted weeks ago!

Stuff is starting to sprout in my potager, which is super exciting.

The sunflowers are coming along nicely.

I have the world's teeniest parsley plants going on here.

The basil is even tinier.

The tomatoes will be planted this weekend and then I will mulch all of this.

The oregano has nearly doubled in size. I still need to add more seeds to those pots.

I am very proud of this geranium. I just don't do well with flowering plants. I have bought many geraniums in the past, only to have them wither and die. This one was looking like it was headed in that direction too. Somehow I managed to not only get it back to being green again, but it's blooming!!! That's never happened for me before!

The strawberries are still doing nicely. I had a couple stunted berries and I think it was because the pot wasn't getting enough sun. I moved it and they seem to be getting a better form now.

My newest succulent has a little shoot. I was really worried about this one, because on the way home it tipped over and all of the little pieces fell out of the pot. They were without soil for a couple of hours and I wasn't sure if I repotted them properly. I'm guessing this means I did okay?

I also have a fuchsia that I potted for the front entry that has not gone the way of the raunculous that preceded it yet, so that's good too!

Hooray for plants that grow!

Garden Progress Journal - 6/2/11

Can you believe half the year has gone by already? What the heck is that all about??? Geez.

I haven't done a garden update in a while. Here's what's going on in my back yard.

We had a playdate and while the grown-ups were inside chatting, Bubba and his buddy decided to dig up a couple aloe vera plants and have a dirt fight. You should have seen how dirty they were! It was kind of funny, actually. Luckily it was just aloe which is very sturdy and not something I really cared about like the strawberries or thyme.

I made a little wall from some cinderblocks and used it to hold my potted plants. They were looking kind of rough being in the direct sunlight all day. Here they get sun in the morning and early afternoon, then shade during the hottest part of the day. It seems to be working for them.

The zinnia plants are starting to gain some height. I wonder how long until they have flowers?

Check it out - I'm growing a tumbleweed. HA! It even comes with it's own critter. Yay - not.

The arugula has gone crazy and is getting ready to bolt. I think it may only have a day or two left and no way I can eat that much salad. If you're local, can stop by tomorrow, and want some free arugula, send me an email. I hate to see it all go to waste.

Here's the other side of the bed. The marigolds are doing nicely. I dug a few up and potted them. There's one on the garden cart in the first photo with my succulents, one in a pot with the herbs, and a couple in a pot in the tomato bed. I can see why bugs don't like these things - they freaking smell NASTY!!!

I will say though, it pleased me very much when we went peach and veggie picking to see rows of these in the fields. They must really work.

Behind the marigolds, under the zucchini plants, there are carrots.

The freaking pumpkins. They're going to take over the yard by the end of summer!!! I can't believe how long the arms of the plants are. Those little tendrils that I thought were so cute a few weeks ago are now a thorn in my side. They grab onto everything - other plants, the bougainvillea, each other - and hold on tight. It's amazing how tightly and thoroughly they manage to wind themselves around stuff. I have spent a lot of time very carefully unwinding them from things so I can spread out the vines so they don't choke each other off.

It's starting to get blossoms, but only female ones so far. I have found one baby pumpkin at the end of the longest vine but it has not blossomed yet.

The potager. I love how neat and tidy it looks. The sunflowers are getting some height, which is nice. The cilantro has sprouted little flowers, which is odd to me because they're not very big. I've bought cilantro at the grocery store all my life so I know how long they should be and they're maybe half that. I need to Google and see if I can still use it or if it's like the arugula and unusable once it's bolted. That would be sad.

The other night I wanted some oven roasted potatoes but didn't feel like running to the store for rosemary. Then I remembered - I have some in the back yard! It was so cool to be able to just go out there and snip a little off my plant. Love it.

The tomatoes got a shade cloth a couple of weeks ago. It's so freaking hot here already. I hate it! We bent some PVC pipe over the bed and secured them by sliding them over short rebar stakes in the ground. A piece of shade cloth from the hardware store and some binder clips to hold it all together...

...and we have tomatoes!!! I was so freaking excited when I made this discovery, I may have done a little happy dance right there on the stepping stones. Only the Romas have fruit at this point in time, but the heirlooms are starting to blossom too. These are, I think, the most expensive freaking tomatoes in the history of mankind. Anyone who tells you that you can save money by growing your own is a giant freaking liar. I haven't even bought them cages yet!!!

At least I know that they are truly organic and I have the satisfaction of saying that I grew them myself. That counts for a lot in my book. :)

Garden Progress Journal - 6/27/11

Summer sucks. We've officially hit our summer stride here in Arizona and every day the temperature hovers at around 115 degrees. You literally have to work up the courage to open the door and step outside, which makes watering the garden difficult. Sure, people who don't understand this heat will tell you to water in the evenings, but it will stay over 100 degrees well into the night. Last night it was still 100 degrees at 10:30 at night!

Everywhere else in the country, it seems, people have just started their summer gardens. Here, things are starting to die and the growing season is wanting to come to an end. for instance, last week this happened:

One day I went out to water and it was fine, and the next day it had been dried by the sun to a complete crisp. I always thought it was impossible to kill mint, so I was totally bummed. It didn't just happen to me either. I heard from at least one other Facebook friend who lives here that the same thing happened to her mint, on the same day too. Crazy.

I took the pot and set it on the patio in the shade. I bought a packet of oregano seeds so I could try (again) to grow it. Hey, third time's the charm, right? I was going to pull the dead mint out of the pot and just use that one. Well, slacking off worked in my favor, because...

Baby peppermint plants!!! I was so excited to see those in there when I went out to water today. I'm going to wait until they're a little bigger and then trim out all the dead parts.

The zucchini has completely overtaken that bed. You can just see a teeny marigold peeking out from under the right side of the plants. There are carrots and green onions growing under there, but I'm not holding out a lot of hope for them since they're not really getting any sun anymore. I'm still getting plenty of zucchini though!

Pumpkin vines are overtaking the back yard. They're making it really tough to mow in that area. One of the vines has climbed up into the bush on the right and is now peeking out from the top.

The strawberry plant has sent out a runner, which has rooted itself in the pot next to it that contains garlic chives. I checked and it looks like there is a good root started too, so yay free strawberry plant! You can see that the original plant is still giving us the occasional berry too. It's such a nice little treat when you find one that's ripe, because they're like candy. Nothing at all like the ones from the grocery store.

My tomatoes all have cages now and most of the plants have at least a few fruits on them. The roots are starting to show on some of them so I think I'm going to go get more compost to spread around them. That should add some more nutrients to the soil too.

A few of the Romas are starting to ripen, which worries me. They didn't get very big - they're more the size of those yellow pear tomatoes than Roma tomatoes. I just don't think they're getting enough water since I'm watering by hand. Next year I'm definitely going to have to figure out a drip system, at least for those.

The sunflowers are almost all blooming. They're so pretty!

My zinnias started to bloom too. The plant looks kind of sorry because it was in the sun before and the leaves got a bit scorched. It's in the shade on the patio now and seems to be doing much better, but not all of the stems recovered. There are quite a few that are sort of drooping off to the sides, but the flowers still are blooming. I just love these pretty green flowers and will definitely be planting them again.

Garden Progress Journal 5/18/11

The potager (which I refer to as bed #1) is looking a lot more green these days. Everything in there seems to grow SO SLOW though. We've already had a few 100 degree days so far this year (although today is really nice and in the low 70's) so I'm wondering if the heat is keeping things from growing. Also, I really must feed/fertilize. I keep meaning to do it and forgetting.

There are lots of parsley and cilantro plants, but they're still too small to use.

I think the basil was in that batch of bum seeds I got. I did NOT sow them that far apart!

The tomato plants are alive still, which is good, but I pretty much have lost hope of getting tomatoes from them. Next year I start those suckers inside right after New Years!

I thought I was done with strawberries too, but yesterday there was a new bloom on the plant, so we'll see if I get one last berry or not.

The pumpkins are starting to take off. See that one vine poking out to the left of the bed? That's from a plant all the way to the right! There are lots of little curly vines everywhere. It's so cute!

Also, two new pumpkin plants have come up. This is so weird because I planted these months ago and I just figured they were bum seeds like the herbs. To show up so long after I planted them and after the others have grown so much seems strange to me.

The stuff in the pots is doing okay. Garlic chives are starting to come up and the zinnias have a good start. There are teeny tiny baby thyme plants too. There were some teeny ones in the oregano but I can't see them anymore. I hope the heat didn't kill them!

Speaking of oregano... IS this oregano? This plant doesn't look like what I remember the plants in the nursery looking like. It's kind of huge, for starters. It's pretty, but I'm not sure that I grew what I was trying to grow. Does anyone know?

The mint and geraniums are flourishing. There are more garlic chives in the other pot.

The marigolds in my big raised bed are taunting me by taking their sweet time to bloom.

I have a ton of arugula.

As you can tell, we've been eating the spinach. The carrots are getting nice and full too. The zucchini seemed to have slowed down a bit with their vertical growth. They come up to about my hips!

I was able to harvest my first zucchini this week. I made Baked Zucchini Sticks with them and even my zucchini loathing friend and husband liked them. Getting up at 6:30 to hand pollinate these due to a severe lack of bees in this area has paid off.

When my friend was here, we were sitting out in the back yard chatting after dinner when I noticed that the back wall was COVERED in freaking caterpillars. It was so gross! Now I go out there at night with a jar and tweezers to collect them. After a bit of discussion with my husband, we decided that squishing a dozen caterpillars at a time would be disgusting and messy, so instead I flush them down the toilet. I know, I know, no one call Peta, okay?

I did pick this guy off my zucchini plants a couple of days ago. I set the jar on the counter and forgot about it. When I went to go give him his burial at sea, I noticed he had started to spin himself a cocoon! How cool is that? He got a temporary pardon from the queen governor (me) so we can watch his metamorphosis.