Tomatoes

We have 4 Tomatoes!! I came in last night super excited and told Robert, "We can make a Salad!!"

Right now are tomatoes are still very green and very small and our lettuce is still growing, but still very small. So I guess we could have a mini-salad.


Last year I planted tomatoes, and had huge tomato plants, but never a tomato.

I tried to get pictures of our garden and future salad, but I am sometimes pretty camera stupid and that was the case this morning. I took about 10 pictures and then Robert said something about the wrong lens and then made fun of the fact that I didn't even have a card in the camera. (You would think a camera that smart would tell you there isn't a card)

Robert said he will take pictures tonight of all our blooms and tomatoes :) I'll post them!

Blooms

Our veggies are blooming, which means veggies soon. We have flowers on the tomatoes, squash and cucumbers. However, none of the peppers are blooming, I'm not quit sure why that is, but I guess we will wait and see.

:(

Only 2 of my Thyme plants in our indoor plant sowing box have made it. I think it is due to all the rainy days the last couple of weeks and the fact that we really don't get much sun inside the house, because our house faces North. Hum, have to figure out for next year were to put our plant sowing box. So, I planted the 2 surviving Thyme plants last night.

Our Hibiscus adventure was put on hold with all the rain on Saturday. Sunday, while Robert was out taking graduation pictures with our niece and nephew I attempted to pull up one of the monkey grass plants. No success. So, I gave up and decided that I will have to have Robert pull up the monkey grass, which I'm sure he's excited about!

Roses

Nana bought me some rose bushes, Red and White Roses. We have a pink rose bush that sits in the garden that sits in front of one of the living room windows. We are thinking about putting the 2 new bushes in front of the other 2 windows.

Spicy Mixture

I made the Oil/Soapy/Spicy mixture this weekend and sprayed the plants. Let's see if the bugs still come around.

Garden Day 15

Flowers mean veggies are coming. YAY!!

Beans, the white stuff is the soapy/oil/chili spray I put on the plants.

Garlic

Inside plants, probably need to be planted outside soon.

Busy, Busy

We have the Camp Rosales Garage Sale this weekend, so not much gardening is going to happen. Although, I'm thinking about asking Robert for some Hibiscus plants for Mother's Day for the front yard.

We currently have 4-5 monkey grass plants in the front yard that are each bigger then your head. They are HUGE!! We really don't like the way they look and they take up a lot of room. We want to pull those up, put them somewhere else (who knows where that will be) and put Hibiscus plants there.

A couple of years ago I pulled one of the Monkey Grass plants out of the front and put it around our front tree. It took a while to get the plant out of the ground, then I somehow cut it into 4 parts. It looks good now, but wow it was a challenge.

Day 12

The new bricks are in and the plants are growing like crazy!

New Look

I put in the bricks along the fence part of our garden last night. I feel better about it now. There were already weeds/grass coming from the neighbors yard. I had to do it by hand, I thought I could use a hoe or some kind of tool, but I disturbed less by hand. The only things I disturbed was the garlic cloves we planted on Saturday (I put them back and they had no growth yet) and some lettuce along the back of the garden. The lettuce will most likely dry once it gets hot, so that isn't a big loss and we have more lettuce in other places.

I also went to Mike's Garden Center yesterday and bought some mint. I was overly excited and the plant guy looked at me strangely, but I'd been looking for mint or mint seeds for a month now. I planted that in our tomato baskets.

Now, it's just sit and wait. We don't have any blooms yet, so no veggies soon, but you just wait!

Day 8

Our garden at day 8 is amazing. The bean sprouts seem to have come up over night (left side of garden) and really started growing. It's been pretty rainy so we haven't been watering at all. Sunday morning I went out and we had a ton of mushrooms sprouting up. They were gone this morning so that is hope that nothing under the dirt is routing away from all the rain (this can really happen with Squash)

Also, Saturday we planted Cucumbers, Jalapenos and Garlic in the side garden. (I didn't get pictures of these for some reason.) We put a few garlic cloves in the new garden near the back to keep pests from our neighbors yard. Hopefully, the garlic won't make too many things taste like garlic, but Robert would like that. (We don't worry about Vampires in our house, because Robert LOVES garlic.) I have to get some kind of fencing stuff to keep the dogs (Diego) from trampling my plants. (That's his personal walk through)

I also planted more basil in the top of the tomato plants. We are going to have LOTS of basil this year.

Overall, Pretty exciting!! We are going to clip some of the basil and parsley and put it in the fridge for kitchen use and then see how well it grows back. The parsley has taken off and looks really good.

This weeks project is to get the dirt away from the fence so the fence doesn't rout. We have lots of bricks left over from when our house was built. I'm going to try my best to not disturb anything and pull the dirt back and put the bricks in. Why didn't we think of this before...Hum...

Bugs

We have pests eating our leaves already
....HUM....So, I found a recipe for a soap/pepper mixture that says it will keep a variety of pests away.

Mix one teaspoon of liquid dishwashing detergent with one cup of vegetable oil. Shake vigorously to emulsify and add to a quart of tap water.

Steep three tablespoons of dry, crushed hot pepper in 1/2 cup hot water (covered) for half an hour. Strain out the particles of peppers, and then mix solution with the liquid detergent formula. Good for a number of insects on both indoor and outdoor plants.

Use at 10-day intervals as an all-purpose spray.

Note: Test on a single plant first, because it may cause tip burn.

Note: Apply to plants outdoors. Do not use on windy days. Avoid breathing fumes, which can be irritating to nose and eyes. You can substitute hot Tabasco sauce or Louisiana hot sauce for hot pepper.

I'll give this a couple of days and maybe go out and get some diatomaceous earth to put around the garden and on any pests we see.

Strawberries

Well, we have 1 strawberry growing. This plant was saved from last year in the garage during the winter and didn't produce much last year. Currently, it has 2 Strawberries on it! Maybe we will have enough for a smoothie this year. :)

NOTE: Shortly after taking this picture a toddler ran over and picked the Strawberry and tried to eat it. So, now 1 very small Strawberry right now.

Sprouts

Things are sprouting up already!!


These are the indoor seeds we started on Tuesday. After 3 days they are already sprouting. It's Thyme and Tarragon. We have to wait another couple of days before we put them outside.



The little sprouts in front of the sign is, you guessed it, Lettuce. The bigger green behind the sign is basil. Lettuce is supposed to be a cooler weather plant, so it might die away in a couple of months. These were planted last weekend (Saturday)

Then we have Bean Sprouts!! These were planted last weekend (Saturday) I told Robert this morning, "What if we got magic beans and we have bean stalks that go into the sky...?" He asked me another question about pesticides or something, not even excited about going to meet giants in the sky.

Nothing we can eat yet, but we are working on it!! I'm sooooo excited!