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gardening post coming soon....

You must watch this movie....

I made Jim watch this and we are completely overhauling what we eat. I am planning the garden again, we signed back up with Winder Farms. It is going to take some serious planning to make natural/organic fit in the budget, but we are going to try!

Garden Harvest

We harvested some veggies from the garden today! I want to say this is our first real harvest, but we did pull a tomato and a green pepper from the garden about a month ago. This is the first time we have been successful with carrots tho! Our first attempt at squash as well. I am assuming it was time to pick them because they are pretty bright colored and bumpy.... they looked about right.

We have a ton more squash on the plant waiting to ripen up and a few more carrots that are almost there too. We chose the mini carrots hoping they would work better than full size ones and it seems to be true! The girls can't wait to eat them!

I need to get out there and take some new pics, things are going wild!

Garden Update

Things have been slowly growing in the garden. Most things are doing well, but I need to find some more veggies that we like because I have some unused space. I will have to plan better next time.

For now, the lettuce seems to be doing ok. My onion bulbs have not sprouted at all. The carrots are growing still. I just planted beans and they sprouted up quickly! My green pepper is doing far better than the red and the yellow. It has a full size pepper ready to harvest already. The crookneck squash is thriving. I can't wait to see it vining along the rocks. Vine plants are really turning out to be my favorite things to grow!

My basil and parsley are doing well... I have oregano sprouted. I still need to find some cilantro to plant tho. Something has eaten the marigolds I planted in front of the tomato plants... hopefully whatever it was, they are stuffed and will leave the tomato plants alone.

Kyla has been planting sunflower seeds like crazy so we have quite a few sprouting upward. This year I planted both a cucumber bush and a cumber vine... so far only the bush has sprouted and seems to be doing well. My honeydew is just now starting to grow a bit now that its warmer.

All very exciting, more pics below!

Gardening - 2009

I have been a serious slacker in the gardening department lately.... but I am working on getting back on the ball! We are going to use it as part of Kyla's schooling so I guess I have no choice ;) Now if only I can convince her not to pick all the baby plants before they are ready! She was most excited to find a couple of mushrooms growing up out of the garden soil when we started planted.

We have our first baby green pepper! I planted 3 peppers, 1 green - 1 red - 1 yellow. We also planted some herbs (parsley, chives, oregano, basil, etc). Some of the herbs this year are from seeds so we will see how well they do.... I haven't had a ton of luck with planting from seed!

We have also planted some onions, carrots, honeydew melon, tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce, squash, and sunflowers. Still on the list to come are beans, strawberries, maybe pumpkin, and some more herbs. I have a ton more room now that Jim made me a second box (with more sunlight exposure) and I find myself unsure what I should put in it! More pics of the garden below!

First Melon Harvest

I harvested our first successful melon from the backyard this week. I probably let it get a bit too ripe, but the kids have declared it delicious! Surprisingly I have another one that looks like it will be bigger than this one! The melons have been really fun to grow and we will definitely be doing it again next year.

Jim also brought home a cantaloupe that a customer gave him as a tip. I guess they got to talking about melons and this customer had a backyard full of melon vines.

I am behind on fall planting - I was hoping to have stuff in the ground already but I still need to get soil for the new boxes and make a plan. Hopefully I will get that done this weekend!

It's almost time for fall planting...

I learned from the container gardening workshop at the Springs Preserve that the best time to start planting for the fall is right around August 15th. That day is quickly creeping up on us and I have big plans this fall!

So to start getting ready I pulled up my tomatoes and peppers - they were dying a slow death anyway. I also pulled up the corn because the soft soil recommended in Square Foot Gardening just isn't right for corn. The stalks just fell over sideways. Then I constructed a few more trellises - goodness knows the honeydew melon needs it. IT has taken over the back section of the planting box... now I know to plant smaller veggies in front of it. Planting the eggplant right next to the melon was not the best choice.

Anyway, here are updated pics of the new trellises. I love how easy it is to make these... and cheap! They may not be the prettiest things int he world, but they work well. They are made with just regular white PVC pipe and nylon netting. IF you buy the 10 foot long pieces of PVC pipe from the hardware store you can then cut them in half. You need three 5 foot pieces and 2 PVC elbow pieces for each trellis if you are making a "single". If you want to make the double you need five 5 foot pieces, 2 elbow pieces, and 1 PVC "T" piece. So you can make 1 double and 1 single out of 4 of the 10foot long pipes, which works out to about $8-10 plus another $4 for the nylon netting.

Jim had the great idea to angle the add on I had to make for the melon outward. It was really a necessity because of the hard ground next to the wall and it will also allow me to put a few potted herbs back there and offer them a bit of shading by means of the trellis!

At the container gardening class I also learned of a neat resource -the Cooperative Extension of the University of Nevada. They have a ton of really helpful information and flyers related to gardening and other nature issues on their website. One of which is this Becoming a Desert Gardener Flyer which is packed with great informating including a chart of what to plant when! Next weekend I am going to build another box on the side of the house for smaller, non vining type of plants (lettuce, carrots, etc).

Melons, Eggplant, Peppers, oh my!

I figured it was time for a garden update! Some things are doing well, others not so much. First we have the squash, it seems to be doing OK. No babies yet, but looks healthy enough. The watermelon is doing ehhh... parts of it seem ok, others seem a bit dry. I need to get it climbing up a trellis and just haven't had time yet.



Here you can see the wonder that is my honeydew melon. It is climbine and trailing all over the place. The tomatos in the back corner have become a support system for the melon. There are lots of little bulbs on it, but 3 that are most promising.


The green peppers are so-so, it is just too hot and they are being drowned out by the melon and eggplant. I know better next time! I do have a nice sized yellow one that I need to pick. Also a nice sized eggplant that is ready to harvest I believe.



Finally we have some green beans that are doing great! I thought they would climb up, but they are really just bushy and I need to find a better place to plant them next time. You learn so much by just planting things and seeing what happens. It turns out the corn is just not doing well, the plants are doing fine but the soil is too loose to hold the stalks up. Carrots and lettuce are growing tho.

Gradening in the city...

The backyard garden seems to be going ok. There are definitely some issues (the ants seem to think I planted it solely for their pleasure) but I think things are progressing well for my first serious attempt. Here is the "viney" stuff - the far right is the honey dew melon growing up the trellis. Next to the honey dew is the eggplant, and then 2 tomato plants.


Unfortunately the tomato plants took quite a beating from the dog jumping in the bed, but there are still a few prospects....