How Does Your Garden Grow?

I haven't posted much about the garden because I'm always forgetting to take pictures. I have grape tomato plants, yellow beans, bell peppers, eggplant, and lot of strawberries. Here are some pictures of the blackberry and grape plants that we planted three years ago. My blackberry vine is huge. I've gotten at least a pint of berries from it already. We finally have grapes!

Our grapevine takes over the trellis every year. Should I trim it or not?

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Surprisingly, pretty well. We haven't lost any more plants, and I am doing super with my seedlings. We just did yellow bean seeds and those were fun! They are almost a foot tall and I only planted them last week. They need to be transplanted to the ground, but I am running out of room. I have already put my cherry tomato seedlings in the ground, and they look nice. The watermelon seedlings I put in a few weeks back did not do so well. Not one of them, in fact. Oh well, no watermelons. I am very proud of my cabbage seedlings. The seeds are tiny, about the size of poppy seeds, and the seedlings were puny too. But look at them now! I don't actually know how to cook cabbage, but I have eaten it before. Actually, the only time I've eaten cabbage is when I would be at the mall, and I wanted to eat "healthy" - I would get the steamed vegetables with my chinese platter. I haven't had that in about nine months now, and I am craving it. So I figure, I will find out how to make it just like the cheap Chinese place at the mall, and maybe I will make some bourbon chicken to go with it or maybe the orange chicken or perhaps the terayki... Moving right along, the broccoli is growing. I have one that is ridiculously huge and one that hasn't seemed to have grown at all. All the berry plants are just sitting there. I am not sure if they are sleeping or just deciding whether to die or not. The few leaves on them are green, so I figure that's got to be good. Right? The tomato plants are alive and growing a little taller, just barely. The cauliflower have surprised me by growing like crazy just this last week. They are now bigger than the broccoli. Except for that little one in the corner, I think that's the runt of the litter. My onions are growing too. I don't know when I am supposed to harvest them, since I can't actually see if they are getting bigger or not. It makes me want to dig one up every other week to check their progress. Anyone with experience growing onions? Child #2 has gotten so obsessed with going outside every day, that he has snuck out the door with no pants on before we even had breakfast. He says he is going to let the dogs out, and then he just follows them out. I have since learned to always have the deadbolt on. Thank goodness he can't work the deadbolt. He is especially happy that the air conditioner is now turning on and off. This is a carry over from last year, when he was obsessed with air conditioners. (I remember last summer at his 3 year check up, and all he wanted to do was stare out the window at the AC fan humming away. The pediatrician looked a little concerned and asked, "Does he do that all the time?" Obsess about fans? Yes. Thankfully, the doctor was able to get his attention long enough to ask a few questions, so not a total obsessive. All the same, I now have a prescription for an OT assessment, so we'll see what they say.) We had school outside twice last week. It actually seems to make the boys more calm. How strange. Child #1 sat and listened to stories about different types of wasps in the Christian Liberty Nature Reader. Awesome book - cheap, simple, lovely. That was until Child #2 walked onto an ant hill. He does that like clockwork every four months. Of course, I go swooping in, pulling the shoes off, pulling the pants off, swatting away at his legs and feet. I make sure to kill every last one that went on him. How dare they bite my son? Thankfully, he only had about six bites, so it could have been worse. Most of the time, I love being outside, feeling the sun and the breeze and the smells. I really hate the bugs though - red ants, wasps, hornets, bees, spiders. I cannot even begin to tell you how many biting and stinging insects I see when I go outside. But, no lizards!

Lazy Weekend Gardening

We started the spending freeze about a month ago, and it has been quite a change. I have less interest in sales. We eat at home every night. Aside from the grocery store and library, we don't have any list of errands. It has also freed up our Saturdays because we don't go shopping or out to eat. We have been spending all that time hanging out together, playing and "gardening". I use that term loosely because even though I plant things and move the dirt around, I don't actually get them to stay alive very long. Sure, back in Florida, I could stick marigolds in the ground and get them to grow for awhile, but it doesn't take a lot of talent to have marigolds and banana trees in Florida. Since the price of food is getting to be more than the price of clothing and toys, I decided we should try growing fruits and vegetables. Given the current state of our world, we have nicknamed it our ArmaGarden. In other words, if all hell broke loose, we would be surviving on my growing skills for our sustenance. Haha. Maybe it's an ArmaGarden because there will be nothing left of my plants but death and despair by the time I'm done with them.

It is important for you to understand that I don't really know anything about gardening, especially as it pertains to growing things that are supposed to be edible. I started reading about planting vegetables and fruits about the same time I started planting them, and frankly, none of the stuff I've read makes sense. So if you wonder why in the world I planted broccoli next to berry bushes, it's because I am making this up as I go along. Now that you know that, let me tell you about the garden. The priciest items we planted are blueberry, raspberry, blackberry and grape stems (or whatever they're called) at $5 a plant. We planted those first with a nine pack of broccoli plants: $3 and two tomato plants: $2.50 each. Our first casuality came quickly with one tomato plant turning to nothing within two days. It really just disappeared, like it had never existed. I know what you're thinking... rapture, but I swear it just died really fast. We put a cute little fence around all of the plants. The next weekend, we planted a nine pack of cauliflower and forty onions: both $3. We didn't have a lot of time for dilly dallying because it was late in the day. Then it rained for four days, then it was cold. Anyway, we finally had some time to check our garden again this week. Our broccoli was flourishing (Yeah! I am having some success),
but it was apparent that the cauliflower was very unhappy.

My dogs came over to check it out too, and they stepped on three cauliflower and then sat down on two more. Then child #1 came over and had to have close look as well. I think I know why my cauliflower are struggling. More fence! The kids really love to help. I till the dirt and mix in potting soil, then child #1 comes over to dig the hole. In the process, he walks into the garden bed and steps on half of my tilled dirt. Child #2 sits on the sidelines of the garden bed, thankfully. He spends lots of time digging with his little shovel, but he has a bad habit of carrying away precious shovel fulls of potting soil and dumping them in the fire pit (dead leaves pile). So between the two of them, I have to cultivate and till (is that what it's called?) twice as much dirt, one fourth of which disappears. Can you see the advanced math lessons here? Me neither. Today, we replaced the missing tomato with a new one. I also bought a very cheap six pack of marigolds because I read somewhere that they keep the pests away, and also, I'm pretty good with marigolds.

Considering all the money going out for the plants, soil, fence, etc, I'm not really sure if it will pay off, but it is still cheaper than eating out or going shopping. Besides, the kids are learning a lot about how a seed becomes a plant and where food comes from. Way more educational than the mall, so that has to be worth something. And man, it really wears them out! Our newest plants will be coming from seeds on our windowsill. It is much cheaper than buying plants, and it is so much fun to watch a seedling. We just transferred cabbage seedlings to the garden, so now we have watermelon and pepper seeds in the greenhouses. The one draw back is that I did not label many of our plants, so we have already forgotten which is the blackberry and which is the raspberry plant. Oh well, I think we should be able to figure it out if we're fortunate enough to see fruit.