Lazy Noah

While I spent the day busily working in our gardens, Noah lounged with his computer on the porch and directed from a distance. Ohh, alright, I'll give him some credit: the end of the semester has left him with a lot of grading work to finish up, so Noah spent the day doing school work and giving me a hand when I needed it. I definately had more fun :)

Upgrading the Flower Garden

We built a second trellis today for all of the climbing plants in our side flower garden. The central strings will have Scarlet Runner Beans, while the outer pairs will each have a Morning Glory and a Moonflower. This should make a pretty dense backdrop for the flower garden - so far we have Snapdragons, Lobelia and Alyssum growing in front.

Growing Peas

The first sowing of peas has finally grown tall enough that it needs something to climb on. One of today's projects was building this fence of bamboo poles and string. Now we just watch them grow!

First Salad

With the first leaves of lettuce ready to be picked in our garden, Noah and I decided to buy a salad spinner. Here is our first, although skimpy, fresh salad mix from our garden. Our first harvest!

Garden Rows

Here's an update as to how the garden itself is looking these days. It's certainly a lot more green, but still not producing anything edible yet. Just another week maybe and we can try out the lettuce.

Lettuce Leaves

The lettuce plants have really been enjoying this cool weather. We planted a blend of gourmet varieties, but this one certainly seems to be doing the best. I think we will start another row from seed this weekend in order to spread out the harvest.

Cucumber Blossoms

The cucumber plants are amazing! Neither of them has very many leaves, but little buds are blossoming all over each of the plants. I can't believe we'll be eating cucumbers in just a few weeks.

Flower Gardening

Our attempt to improve our lawn has included a new flower bed along the side of the house. So far it is fairly unimpressive, but eventually it will have Morning Glories, Moon Flowers, Violas, Lobelia, and probably some of our herbs. Our efforts have been out-done by the little Crocuses that have come up all over the back yard on their own accord. What a pleasant surprise!

What's the story, Morning Glory?

When I described my tomato plants as being "monsters," I don't think I had seen how fast the Morning Glory seeds came up. In this photo, they are about 7 days old and are already at least 3 inches tall. The seed pack said to plant them indoors 6 weeks before the last frost, but I think we'll very quickly run out of space for them.

Planting Peas

Things are finally starting to grow in the actual garden. this picture shows young little spinach plants in the far left and a few lettuces next to them. Here, I am planting the second sowing of peas, just two weeks aftere the first, which are now just coming up on the far right. These two rows will share a woven fence in between them.

The Great Outdoors

The more I read about vegetable gardening, the more I learn that I've been missing out on precious planting months in the past. Certain vegetables like peas and spinach love the cold weather, and can even be planted when there is still snow on the ground.

Noah and I built this 6' x 6' raised bed and began our carrots, peas, lettuce, and spinach under a plastic cold frame cover about two weeks ago. The nights are now warm enough that the cover is not needed, but we will keep an eye out for any frosty nights that might come along.

Cucumbers

The two cucumber plants we started from seed on March 1st are probably my favorite from all of the vegetables so far. They have grown immensely fast and have already earned their own ceramic pots. A bush hybrid, these plants are grown specifically for container gardening and will produce 6-7 inch long cucumbers. Another great choice from Burpee Seed!

We will plant a few more seeds this weekend so that we have a longer supply of cukes, and I'm sure we'll have a few extra to give away. Feel free to speak up if anyone would like one!

Broccoli

The broccoli plants are probably the least exciting of the bunch, but seeing as how it is the only vegetable that Noah eats, I figured we better try growing them. We planted the first round of seeds on March 1st, but soon thereafter learned that we were much too early. A second batch went in just last week on April 2nd, but we're still waiting to see any activity from these seeds.

I'm quite excited about having fresh broccoli to steam this summer, but it really isn't the most practical vegetable for a compact garden like ours. We probably should have stuck with varieties that have greater yeild per plant, but it's worth giving it a try. We will have room for three or four plants in our garden and will just have to give the extras away.

False Alarm Peppers

Browsing the Burpee Seed catalog was the best part of this winter. We wanted to choose a tasty and ornamental pepper plant that we could grow in a pot on our porch. We came across the "False Alarm Pepper," and it seemed to be a perfect fit. This little plant will have a heavy yeild of firey red, but only mildy spicy peppers. We started the peppers from seeds on March 1st, March 13th, and April 2nd. Because peppers need extremely warm temperatures, these little plants may end up living indoors for most of the summer. It's a good thing that they're well suited for container gardening, but we might attempt to throw a few in as borders to our flower garden.

Sweet Basil

Herbs have been a little more challenging to grow, but our basil plants seem to be doing alright. They were planted just shortly after the tomatoes on the 12th of February, but they have not grown very much comparably. We also planted lettuce, onion and chives that day, and these have all stayed fairly small. The lettuce plants have already been moved into a cold frame in our backyard, but we will save a seperate post for that.

The great thing about these little basil plants is that they already smell like yummy pesto!

Monster Tomatoes!

Our tomato plants are doing great, as you can see! This group was planted indoors from seed on February 5th. I think we were a little eager to start our garden :)

As with most of our plants, we began these seeds in peat pots in a Burpee plastic greenhouse. Tomatoes love heat and moisture, so we have been keeping them under a plant light for a little extra sun each day. Just a few more weeks and we can move them outside.