Garden of Eatin' :: Category Archive

Archive | The Growing Garden RSS feed for this section

Garden of Mess

by Amy on April 28, 2009 in The Growing Garden

Ah, kids. I love em. They bring me more joy then anything else.

But sometimes, they make me go :rant :hide :help :cry :shake :eyeroll :censored

The younger boys (almost 5 and almost 3) were doing more then playing out back the other day, they managed to get the garden gate open and wreak total havok. Most of the plants stomped on, pulled up or otherwise mutilated. It wasn’t malicious, they didn’t have it out for me or my garden, they wanted to help.

So while I can’t be really mad at them, I’m very down and frustrated because I don’t have the time to go fix the destruction, let alone get out there and plant all the other stuff I should have had done 3 weeks ago.

So, I’m kind of giving up on the garden. This isn’t my year for being a good gardener. I’ll try to keep alive what’s left, but the semi-grand-plans I had? Not gonna happen.

Today

by Amy on April 23, 2009 in The Growing Garden

So I haven’t done, uh, anything in the garden, really since I last posted. But things are still happening.

We have 6 potatoes already coming up, I was very surprised to see them already.

Lots and lots of peas and I think this weekend we’ll get the trellis up.

The green beans have all made an appearance and are looking great.

I seriously overplanted lettuce and need to thin like 3/4 of them. Oops.

The onions don’t look great but I think they will be ok.

We’re definitely past the last freeze, it hasn’t dropped below 34 in weeks.

I badly need to get the herbs planted.

Indoors, my tomatoes, celery, green peppers, chives, thyme, and basil are still alive, but not growing nearly as well as they should be.

I don’t think this year’s garden will be as nice as last year’s, I just can’t find the time! But I’m definitely not giving up. My main plan for the next week or so is to get everything that needs to be, planted, and weed. They are taking over, really bad!

Things are happening, a tiny bit at a time

by Amy on April 13, 2009 in Plans & Getting Going, The Growing Garden

Transplanting and I are not best of friends. I’m bad about properly hardening off. I can tell anyone how to do it, but when it comes down to it myself, I forget. Both to put them outside, and to remember to bring them in at the proper time for that day.

I had a mini-stroke when I was pregnant with my 3rd, I’ll blame that.

So the lettuce did not transplant well, it all died and I planted new, and it’s coming up well. The cabbage is not thrilled with being transplanted, but it is still hanging on. The tomatoes, still inside, are sunburned, but still growing. :lol

In the garden, besides the lettuce, I’ve also got peas, almost all germinated and it’ll be time to thin and get the trellis up very soon. A couple green beans have also popped up. Also, the weeds are doing excellent. It’s already time to get out and weed. Also on the to do list is find the Earth Juice and give everything a good feeding, and someday get the herbs out there.

How’s everyone’s gardening going?

What is this plant?

by Amy on September 14, 2008 in The Growing Garden

I know I haven’t had many readers lately mostly due to Blotanical’s (really Google’s) feed problem. Hopefully it’s fixed and this is picked up and displayed!

This weird yellow fruit is getting huge, please help me identify it :treehugger

http://www.garden-of-eatin.com/2008/09/11/identify-this-pumpkin/

Identify this pumpkin!

by Amy on September 11, 2008 in The Growing Garden

I planted 2 kids of pumpkins, both Burpee, one is a “Prizewinner Hybrid” and the other 2 plants are supposed to be “Jack O Lantern”.

There’s 2 plants, both supposed to be Jack O Lantern, planted inches from each other (both were coming in so well I couldn’t bear to pull one :lol)

One is coming in like what I think a normal pumpkin should: green and round:

(The Mystery Plant)
The other came in yellow from the very start and is a little more oval:

What is this thing?

This is the “Prizewinner” for clarification, it came in green like the first picture:

Painfully obvious lessons

by Amy on September 3, 2008 in The Growing Garden

More lessons, con’t from this post…

Tomato cages. Just suck it up and buy them. Stakes do no good when they have 6 “main” stalks coming up from the ground! It’s like trying to stop a monkey from flinging poo. Or trying to contain a 2 year old. Not gonna happen.

Zucchini and squash need a lot more room then the 2′ circle this boneheaded blog author gave them. 4′ all around. Or more.

Weed control. Don’t think because you start out good that you can slack off. Or your garden will look like this after a futile 2 hour weeding session:

That really is almost ALL WEEDS – the taters and corn are all harvested, so all the green you see, except the far right tomatoes and the far left squash, is weeds. :dizzy And that really is after I spent 2 hours taming some of the worst!

Don’t eat the apple in the Garden of Eatin’

by Amy on August 29, 2008 in The Growing Garden

Bad stuff’ll happen….weeds will take over so badly you can’t catch up and all you can hope for it to clear little areas around the still producing plants so they aren’t choked out. Tomatoes will grow so insanely big they’ll all fall over and you were dumb and planted them so close together you can’t untangle them (I’ll be canning tomatoes here soon though!). Cucumbers will be so thick and thorny that is a risk of death to pick anything. One squash plant will completely take over the onions.

Yeah, I’m keeping Earth Juice around :thumb But laying down better weed control next time! It’s really bad, I’m not kidding. Maybe I’ll take a picture if I think I can deal with the embarrassment :lol

General growy-ness

by Amy on August 15, 2008 in The Growing Garden

Just a general update on how things are going in the Garden of Eatin’ today.

The weeds are taking over. I need to get out there and attack with the weed whacker, it’s that bad. It’s not stopping things from growing, so that much is good! But it won’t happen in the next few days…yesterday we had 100F+ temps, today we’re due for 105F and tomorrow is supposed to be 100F, and Sunday 90F…temps should be back in the mid 70s on Monday, so I’ll plan on going lots of work in the garden then, with before after after pics.

The tomato stake experiement has literally been a giant FLOP. As soon as the tomatoes started getting big, the plants got so heavy and thick they’ve tipped over, breaking the stakes and I have lots of tomatoes on the ground at risk from bugs…trying to keep them UP but they just keep growing and falling more :help

The corn is nearly 7′ high with lots of ears. I think we might have some grilled steak and corn for dinner tonight.

The lemon cucumbers are finally growing, well….like taking over their corner of the garden. I definitely planted too many. And the little vines have built in protection to keep me from picking too early, their thorns leave me bleeding when I try.

The strawberries stopped producing fruit all together after giving us hardly anything and are producing runners like crazy. I tried stopped that to see if it would encourage fruit, but it didn’t.

I’ve gotten 6 gigantic zucchini now and there’s lots more growing. I’ll be shredding and freezing it this weekend. Those suckers grow fast!

The crookneck is finally starting to grow fruit, but only after the plant grew to “Little Shop of Horrors” porportions.

Out one pumpkin is about basketball sized and just starting to turn orange.

Potatoes will finish being harvested tonight, there’s 3 plants left and I want to make potato salad. I forgot to write down the ingredients I used last time, I’ll do that this weekend and post the recipe

It’s the great pumpkin, Charlie Brown

by Amy on August 5, 2008 in The Growing Garden

Or, it will be! I sure wish I could watch this little guy grow up.

Then

Now:

I love squash flowers!

Itty Bitty green pepper and Ginormous zuccs

by Amy on July 31, 2008 in The Growing Garden

How do you shorten zucchini properly? Zuck? (that sounds like duck) Zook? Maybe, looks alien though. I’ll stick with zucc until I get a professional opinion.

Anywho, I bring you: one tiny green pepper:

He needs eyes I think.

2 of the zucchinis are the size of a mini baseball bat I have, but thicker. They’re going to be full baseball bat size here soon…

I’m not a heartless pepper killer!

by Amy on July 28, 2008 in General, The Growing Garden

Months ago, I started green peppers inside. I transplanted many outside and they survived but I planted them in a bad spot and while alive, they weren’t growing. Instead of completely giving up on them, I moved them yet again to a good spot (they were right next to the crookneck and would be completely buried right now if I hadn’t :lol ), mostly to see if they could withstand another move. They are still very small plants, but I found a teeny little green pepper on one Pictures soon, it was too dusky when I was out to get a good non-flash photo.