Summer Garden Week 5

Well I took the pictures on time (last Sunday) but haven't had a chance to post the week 5 update until now. We are still having issues with beetles eating the plants, but let's take a look at what else is going on this week . . . .

First off, I planted a whole bed of beans last weekend and they are already starting to sprout - looks promising. As you can see I've gone for the 'square foot garden' approach in this bed, something we had stopped doing for some reason or other, but I think it looks much neater so I thought I'd give it a try again. Most of these beans are green beans but one row on the right is black beans! Never grown them before but it will be fun to see if we can.

Does anyone know anything about pomegranate trees? We planted this one 3 years ago when we moved in here (along with all the other fruit trees) and so far haven't had one fruit off it! Last year we only just had two flowers on it, but this year we have a lot more.

The flowers, while very pretty, always look as if they are dying off before they fully open, and there doesn't look like there's any 'bulb' behind the flower that might turn in to a fruit.

and while I'm asking questions, can someone tell me why my broccoli hasn't got any 'heads' in them yet either? We planted them way back in March! Carla mentioned her broccoli was the same a few short weeks ago, but then earlier this week she showed a picture and hers now has a lovely 'head' on it... go check it out HERE.

Grapes are looking good though.

and tomatoes are getting big!

I am still trying hard to grow squash plants... the seeds I planted last week look great. The little ones you see are tomato seedlings. Since I took this picture bell peppers have started to show too.

These are sad looking melon plants (honeyew and watermelon) that I bought at the store a few weeks ago but didn't want to plant out because I knew the beetles would just eat them... but then I had to plant them because they were looking a little 'leggy' and kept getting dry in the little pots too. I don't think much will come of them to be honest.

What to do with all the seedlings I've got if I don't want to plant them in our beds? Well, we thought we'd try something new. . . . I bought a ready made 'sq ft' garden bed at Lowes this week, they were $40. I thought we might get 2 or 3 actually and put them on the side of the house and fill them with healthy (grub free) soil. Then I thought it was a bit costly to do that so I decided on an idea I've seen online - where you take a kiddies paddling pool, put holes in the bottom and fill that with soil . . .

I planted some squash seedlings in it, but these were already starting to look pretty sad too, I think the beetles had found them (they were sitting on my patio table once they started sprouting). Since this picture was taken I've planted the healthy looking squash seedlings (see pic above) and so far so good. I am determined to get some zucchini again this year!!

We've been doing well with fertilizing on a regular basis, we usually do it every Sunday. Didn't get to do it last week because of Mother's Day!

I'm linking to Fertilizer Friday at Tootsie Time this week.

Summer Garden Week 4

Let's look at the positive . . . . despite the fact that a lot of the plants have been eaten and are still being eaten, it does look like we are making progress (albeit small) in some areas of the garden. I took these photos yesterday afternoon, so let's take a look

First of all, because all of my squash plants have been eaten I have grown some from seed in pots (I mentioned this last week but didn't show a pic) and am hanging on before I plant them out until I think they may survive the beetles attacks! (I have been using the new spray 'pyrethran' or something or other? on these and other stuff in the big beds) We can still see the cucumber beetles, which by the way look like this.....
but they don't seem to be doing as much damage since I sprayed them. The two green pots above have dill seedlings in them but they don't seem to be growing any larger. And the purple pot at the top right of the pic has lavender seeds in it.

Right corner view of the garden (above)

Left corner view... look how big the sunflowers are getting!

Peas and beans. Beans are on the right, peas top left. The black bits on the left are where we've planted more cucumber seeds! Hopefully they will come up too and we can spray them to keep the beetles off.

Progress! LOOK we have pea pods :-)

and the beans are starting to flower too.

The tomatoes seem to be doing well too. The peppers on the right, not so much!

Look at this sad looking thing.... it's supposed to be a green bell pepper! It looks very pale and sickly to me, not sure if it will get darker as it grows or if it will just shrivel up and die?

We planted pumpkins last week. These were already started in pots and were getting their second set of leaves on so I planted them out (6 total) only to have 3 eaten within days :-( I've since put more pumpkin seeds in the ground here to see if we can get more started.

the blackberry bushes are now full of berries :-)




Have a great Sunday everyone.

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.

Weekly update....

It was Spring Break this week so we've just been pottering around the house and yard a little. The weather was nice enough to be out but there wasn't much we could do by way of cleaning up the yard, because we haven't been to buy supplies yet, and Jason was working most of the days.

Today is the first day of Spring but the weather changed dramatically! We had a thunderstorm last night and woke to a back yard flooded in parts. And the temps dropped to the 50's. It's felt so cold today I've put the heating back on!

I planted some lavender seeds and dill seeds this week and had them in the little green house, but the wind blew it over today (despite it being tied to the wall!) and the pots have gone every where. I don't know if I can save them or if I should just start again. They'd only been in a couple of days so hadn't even sprouted.

I am going to try and update this blog once a week (at the weekend) and show anything new we've been doing. This is really just a blog for me, but if anyone so happens to wander in, well, hello and welcome :-) You are more than welcome to browse around, see what we're up to and of course leave a comment if you so chose.

Earlier this week I also planted the herbs I'd recently bought in to a new bed nearer the house....

A New Year....

The weather is warming up here in Central Texas, it's meant we've been able to get out in the garden a little this past week. We want to start gardening again this year but we haven't had a chance to get any seeds started. So yesterday while I was at the grocery store, I picked up some of these. . .

tomato plants, spaghetti squash, bell peppers, jalapenos, herbs and a strawberry plant! We haven't put them in the ground yet, we'll wait a week or so before we do that. But I did separate some of the plants in to individual pots. There were 3 spaghetti squash 'shoots' so I divided those, and a couple of sage plants in the same pot, so I divided those too. I also put the strawberry plant in a moss hanging basket.

For now we've put the plants in our little greenhouse we bought at Lowes last year (ready for seedlings this year!)

I also planted some seeds in trays for grape tomatoes, more jalapenos, sunflowers (Jason wants to grow more of these) and some spinach.

The garden looks pretty sad right now! I took this picture this morning from the game room window...

The grass is still all dormant but the clover (and other stuff?) is growing green. The veggie beds are all empty as you can see, except for a couple of things in my herb garden - the rosemary and cilantro made it through the winter. We would really like to do something about the pathways this year. The grass and weeds grow rampant once the summer comes and it's so hard to keep the paths clear. Last year we paid to have them weeded and mulch put around them, but that didn't keep the weeds at bay for long. I'm hoping we can invest some money in to getting at least some of the pathway concreted this year.

Earlier this week Jason planted some seeds straight in to the beds, some were peas, and we also put in some 'mescalin' lettuce, and I think beets? I'll have to get better at taking note of these things.