Summer Garden Week 3

I'm a couple of days late with the garden update this week, but better late than never! Things aren't looking so good this week, well some things are and some things aren't. The herb garden is looking good. . . .

this is the cilantro I grew from seed, I just sprinkled it on the bed a few weeks ago when the chance of frost had passed. Cilantro is a cold weather herb (which I didn't know last summer and kept wondering why it would grow so fast and go to seed before I even had a chance to use it!). There is a small bunch of it behind these main ones that I bought at the store, but mine appears to be doing even better than that one. You can also see my two pots of mint (spearmint and peppermint) and some rosemary here.

What's not doing good are the squash :-( Dang cucumber beetles are all over them and have eaten just about every one of them. I finally gave in with the natural homemade spray and went and bought some yesterday. It is still 'garden safe' but just not organic. I have more zucchini doing well in individual pots but I'm not going to put them out yet until the beetles have gone, hubby said they are seasonal and won't be around all summer (I hope he's right).

Here's the picture taken from the left side of the garden, and below is the picture from the right side. You probably can't see much difference from last week but I want to keep posting from these two locations so over time we might see a difference in growth. These were taken Monday morning, so the garden is in shade.

I bought this strawberry plant weeks ago and put it in this hanging basket. I have no where to hang it now that I've put up a topsy turvy plant (which also looks pretty sad) so I just leave it on the ground. It has barely grown. Do you think it needs to go in the ground or a bigger pot?

we have 3 tomato plants... I'm happy to say they seem to be doing well so far.

the broccoli might still be in with a chance too, something was eating it's leaves so I sprayed those too!

I'm linking to Outdoor Wednesday today. Be sure to visit Susan and all the other wonderful participants.

Summer Garden Week 2

We had our first harvest of the season this week... some of my mesclun lettuce leaves were ready to pick :-) Don't they look pretty? I picked some twice this week and made myself a salad both times .

The second time I also cut a few chives from the garden, and I made a balsamic vinaigrette (from the South Beach book) that called for fresh thyme and basil leaves... which I also got from my herb garden. It's fun when you can start making meals with what you've grown out in your own back yard.


So, here we are with week 2 of our Summer Garden update. I want to try and take pictures of the same things each week, at the same angle so we can see how things are progressing. I hope that doesn't make things too boring for you all. For me it will hopefully show that plants are indeed growing when half the time I think they look no different. Of course over time as we plant new things I will add new pictures too (for instance, the lettuce won't grow when it gets too hot so I will be planting something else in it's place hopefully).

Here is the tomato and pepper bed again, with the mesclun in the background. You can compare with last week's picture if you scroll down to my week 1 post.

and here's a close up of the mesclun... this was after I'd cut some leaves off twice for salad!

broccoli is definitely getting bigger.

Peas are starting to get little flowers on them... the beans don't look much different to me!

I will try to take a picture each week from two corners of the 'garden'. This is from the left corner (pic above)

and this is from the right hand corner. I'm working on making the paths nice, but it's a costly thing!

WHAT'S NEW: Grapes are starting to grow again - we've never really had any to eat off these vines, we only bought them last year, and while they had grapes on them, they didn't really mature to anything we could eat. . . .

We have 4 grape vines... I'll share more about them next week.

We also have pumpkins ready to plant out. We're working on getting another bed cleared out for them.

Sunflowers

We had one big sunflower last year and it appears to have seeded itself in these two beds. I hope to gather together the 'garden' posts I made last year on my daily blog and will make a link here so you can see how big the sunflower got!

The weather is perfect right now for getting out in the garden, warm but not hot. Soon we'll be having to go out there early in the morning or late at night as the sun is going down, but for now, on a warm and balmy April evening. . . . . this is where you'll find us :-)

Summer Garden Week 1

I recently found Sweet Pea's lovely blog again. I remember reading her last year and loved seeing some of her garden posts. Well her new blog is wonderful. Her garden posts are all grouped together and I am really enjoying reading old posts and seeing pictures of her winter garden. She's in Houston and that means she has the same climate as we do. We can plant a summer and a winter garden here (we just never got around to doing winter stuff, but hopefully this year we can give it a try). Sweet Pea's posts have motivated me to try and post weekly here too! I know I said I would in my last post.... but well, that never happened.

So, here we are about 3 weeks after I last posted and I shall do a quick recap and call it 'week 1'. These pictures were taken about 5 days ago on April 8th:

above - this bed has 3 tomato plants on the left, and 3 pepper plants on the right (at the top of the picture you can see mesclun (baby lettuce leaves)

Here's a close up of the leaves.

These are broccoli plants.

Here we have beets.

This is my new herb garden... everything looks so small!

This bed has peas and beans in it. The peas are along the edge where the netting is, so they can climb up.

A close up of the peas!

A view looking toward the back of the house.

I get impatient at this time of year and often think the plants are not growing very fast! We had 3 squash plants and they have slowly been eaten by cucumber beetles. I'm pretty sad about that. I've planted more seeds and I have one remaining plant, so I'm still hoping we can get some zucchini this year. I will hopefully post after each weekend and take pictures of the progress. At least that way I can see for myself that things really are growing, even if they don't look like they are!

I'm linking this post to Outdoor Wednesday this week. Be sure to visit Susan and all the other participants for some great outdoor pics.