Garden surprise

It must be noted that I am a very lazy gardener.  Last fall, I planted the garden, and when it became clear that it wasn't going to produce much, I just left it for dead.  Didn't water it, didn't weed it, etc.  Bad gardener!

So, when I returned to the garden last weekend, I wasn't surprised to find that a good part of it was choked with weeds.  I was, however, very surprised to find a number of teeny tiny plants that had survived the winter (and more strikingly, my neglect).

Teeny tiny lettuces (post-weeding).



 Teeny tiny snap peas.



Teeny tiny kale.



 One teeny tiny beet, roughly in the center of the photo.

 J also built me a raised bed (background) which I will plant with lettuce, spinach and a few herbs. 

We went to the garden center to pick up soil, and while there, the girls each picked out two flowering plants (to the right in this photo, they each have their own window box), and we bought six strawberry plants.  The raspberries and blackberries I bought last summer did horribly after I planted them into the ground (which is basically just building materials left over from the houses piled up with some clay), so I figured I'd try putting the strawberries into containers.

We'll see what happens!

Winter garden

After the relative success of my summer garden, I had grand notions of a fall/winter garden overflowing with kale and peas.  I planted about 10 weeks ago.  Here's my progress.

Foreground: mesclun mix, arugula, cilantro and mini Romaine.
Middle: snap peas.
Back: I tried to grow beets, kale and green beans ... and
those broccoli plants are left over from the summer.

I actually planted this broccoli back in April - by September it still
hadn't produced a darn thing.  I left a couple plants in just to see what
would happen.  Check it out!  Only took seven months to grow a
golf-ball-sized head.

Kale and beets ... but the kale leaves are only about 1 cm long, and the
beets grew sorry little greens ... and nothing else.

Container kale ... which is doing much better than my garden kale.

Container mesclun mix.

Garden update (and cool things Jeremy has done part 1)

I spend a lot of space on this blog showing everyone what I do with my spare time, but rarely do I show you what Jeremy does with his.  I have a few of my husband's projects to show off but I figured I'd start off with this garden update.

With temperatures routinely in the high 80s and 90s, my garden has wilted down to nearly nothing.  The downward spiral occurred not long after Jeremy built me a trellis for my spaghetti squash.

I was all excited because I had one fruit starting to grow - but after it reached about four inches long, it just stopped growing and then its vine withered and died.  The vine on one of my plants is still growing but not producing many blossoms (or any female ones until this morning).  The other three plants are decidedly stunted. Here are two of them.  Their leaves are quite small, though they don't seem to be as afflicted with the browning and yellowing around the edges that I'm finding on the more robust plant on the trellis.

This morning I finally saw two more female squash blossoms  - one on one of the stunted plants, shown above). As there is still a dearth of pollinators in the area, I pollinated them myself.  Hopefully they will start doing something.  My suspicion, though, is that the soil is out of nutrients (since it was pretty crummy to begin with) and that they won't bear any fruit.  There go my fall spaghetti squash plans!

There's still some stuff growing

The weather got hot and my arugula and cilantro went to seed, the spinach following soon after.  My lettuces are beginning to wilt and wither, and my broccoli seems to have stopped growing (and the leaves are turning purple - anyone know what that is about?)

But I got a lovely surprise on Monday afternoon.  My spaghetti squash is blooming!  There are lots of blossoms, but only one female (which are the kind that turn into actual squash).  Here she is (sorry about the blur, I'm still figuring out the manual setting on my camera):

These blossoms need to be pollinated with pollen from the male blossoms.  I haven't seen any bees flying around the garden, so I decided to try hand-pollinating using directions I found online.

Also, we've been eating a very sparse crop of sugar snap peas for a few days now.  I will plant more in the fall, and next spring I'll plant earlier, which I think will help.

Garden update ... ssssssss

We've had seeds in the ground for nigh on eight weeks now.  We've been enjoying garden salads for three weeks or so.  I go out and pick every day or two, and the girls help wash it - leaf by leaf because there are always caterpillars or eggs on the undersides.  A few days ago this guy rode in on the romaine.

We've got a few more weeks of salads ahead, though they will be slightly less peppery as the heat has turned my arugula too bitter to eat.  No problem - I'll plant more in the fall!

In very exciting news, I spotted my first pea flower today.  I've read that this means that actual peas are in the offing (squee!).  I would have taken a photo for you, except when I was inspecting my pea bed, I found this guy lurking under the mulch.  Can you spot him?

That would be a snake.  His snout and beady eyes are peeping out from beneath the mulch at the center of the photo, just below the weed at the base of the pea plants.  It was a hot afternoon and I guess he wanted some shade. (Also, no, I did not get that close to the snake.  I took this with my telephoto lens - I was at least 10 feet away from that sucker).

I saw him and involuntarily shuddered.  By the time Jeremy got home, the sun had gone behind the clouds and he had slithered out.  We decided to de-mulch the garden to make it less inviting for snakes.  I will just have to get in there and weed every day, I guess.

It seems to be a summer for snakes around the neighborhood, though.  One was spotted earlier this week on the playground and I've heard at least one more report of a snake in the grass.  Our neighbors say they didn't see any the previous year.

Shudder.

Are you sick of the garden yet?

Tough cookies.  My sewing time has been drastically reduced, we're still figuring out our new routine so adventures are few, and my garden is my new fixation.  I try to grab some time here and there when the kids are napping to work in it.  This week we took another trip to a local nursery, and I came back with a trunk full of flowers.  On Thursday I dug some trenches for these climbing roses:

I think this climbing jasmine vine will end up in a pot that I purchased today at the grocery store, and probably live on the front porch:

Not sure where these berry bushes (raspberry and blackberry) will end up; but I think I want at least one more:

I also have some pretty roses in the front bed:

Today being Saturday, I had the luxury of another set of parenting hands to watch the kids, and I got to spend a couple hours weeding and mulching (with help, of course).

Jeremy and Natasha built a trellis for the peas, too:

I harvested enough lettuce, arugula and spinach for a nice sized salad:

And now our garden looks like this:

Hello there, cute Little Gem lettuces!

Hello, tasty red- and green leaf lettuce!

Nice to see you, pretty pretty snap pea vines!

And of course our spaghetti squash and arugula, going strong:

I can't believe it has taken me so long to get into vegetable gardening.  I LOVE it!

In the garden - 4 weeks on

We planted most of our crops (we have crops!) four weeks ago.  Everything is coming up, some more nicely than others, and while I can't imagine that we will actually have full-grown lettuces, peas and squash in the backyard, it is fun just watching the little seedlings grow.

As of this morning:

Broccoli, with spinach in the foreground.

Spaghetti squash!  So fun to watch it grow because the leaves are
expanding exponentially.

Lettuce.

Cute, cute sugar snap pea shoots.  Something has been chomping on
 some of them, though.

Really slow-growing arugula with more squash in the back.

That's it for the back.  In front I have planted some herbs in among the flowers. 

Cilantro.  The first true leaves have formed and they really taste like
cilantro!  Go figure!

Basil, which is doing really poorly.

In the brown planter, arugula seedlings bought from a neighbor.  In the
yellow, basil seedlings bought at a local nursery.  In the purple, mint
growing from seed. Except it doesn't look like mint to me.  We'll see what
comes out.

Also recently found in our garden:

This is a Levantine viper.  It was in my backyard last weekend.  Not this exact one.  I was too busy being paralyzed with fear to take a photo. My neighbor killed it with a shovel. Wikipedia has since informed me that it is an endangered species.  I should probably feel bad about that, but my kids play in the yard.  So I don't.

Garden update

You guys.  I checked the garden yesterday.

Stuff is growing.

Stuff that I planted.

Like sugar snap peas!

And spinach!

And broccoli on top of the spinach because I forgot that I had already put spinach there! And they will probably both die but I don't care because I'm justsofreakingexcited that something grew!

In the garden

I have never successfully grown anything. I've never really even tried to grow anything.  I am generally game to try new things - like teach myself to knit and sew, or to attempt all manner of complicated baked endeavors.  But gardening has always seemed intimidating.

I, apparently, am not the only one who doubts my own green thumb. When, upon moving to Georgia, I remarked to my husband that I would like to plant a vegetable garden, he gently recommended we hire a gardener.  I argued, but Jeremy diplomatically suggested that perhaps it would not be so easy to find time to do the necessary research, not to mention the work itself, with a new baby in the house.

So we hired Giorgi.  Last fall he took out the hideous succulents that were encroaching, fungus-like, onto the sidewalk in front of our house and replaced them with tulip and hyacinth bulbs.   Then he dug out a garden plot in the backyard.

This week he showed me and the girls how to plant seeds.  We put cilantro, oregano and basil in between the flowers out front, and two kinds of lettuce, spinach, snap peas and broccoli in the back.

Then yesterday the girls and I did that Pinterest thing where you paint rocks to be your garden plot markers.  Today we put them out in the yard.

Hopefully something will grow.