garden update

I took some photos this week of my garden...  I have a lot of rogue plants trying to take over, so it looks pretty unorganized, but I know where everything is so I guess it doesn't really matter.  Now that I have an idea of how different plants behave as they grow, I can plan out the garden next year and make it much prettier.

So here is my crazy-looking garden.  It's starting to give off a lot of tomatoes and peppers.  The broccoli is finally starting to give less yield and trying to bolt, so I think I'll let it go after the next harvest.  I have a couple gallon ziploc bags to freeze so we'll be able to eat it later on in the year.  I will definitely plant broccoli next year...  it was fabulous and extremely low-maintenance.  The only thing is that is seems to be the wasps' favorite place to hang out, and buzz out in my face to scare me when I'm trying to pick some florets.  At this point, I'm bounding out of the garden and jumping over plants to get the heck out of Dodge, screaming "Uz!  There are WASPS!  I'm ALLERGIC!"  As if he doesn't know by now.  If I'm lucky, he'll come out and scare them away so I can resume my gardening...  after I pick up all the broccoli and tomatoes I spilled on the ground in my haste to get out of there.  Whoops.

This is the view from the porch.  I know it looks crazy.  It'll be crazier at the end of summer when all the baby pumpkins are taking over the backyard.  I feel sorry for Uz when he mows...  he'll have to pick up all the vines and throw them in the garden to avoid chomping them up with the lawn mower.  Ah, well.

The tomato plants are out of control.  The flimsy wire cages didn't do much, so I'll probably invest in some better ones next year...  and work on spacing.  The sun has really been hard on my plants, especially the tomatoes and poblanos.  I'm hoping they pull through alright...  the tomatoes seem okay (they are giving off green fruit!), but the poblanos I'm not so sure about.  I'm crossing my fingers!  Oh, can you spot a couple red tomatoes I need to pick?  There are actually a dozen or so hidden behind all the leaves, but you can only see two or three in this picture.

The tomatillos are obviously trying to take over the entire garden.  I hope they don't cause too much trouble with my other peppers.  There are a couple little tomatillo peppers almost ready to pick!

See that cute purple bell pepper?  It'll be ready in two or three days!  I love them...  we've had several already this summer and they are delicious.  Do you see all the jalapenos?  Just a little longer and they'll be ready.  I have been picking some of the big ones, but I'll have a huge yield from my two plants soon.  I'm really ashamed of all the weeds, but they get that big in just a few days so it's hard to keep up with all of them.  I will be weeding later this week!

These are not all the plants in my garden (I'm missing quite a few herbs and other pepper plants) but I thought it would be fun to show off what we've got going on in the backyard!

just lazy.

I was pretty lazy this weekend. I talked to my doctor about my fall, and he thinks it's probably a fractured tailbone. So my weekend consisted mainly of these few things:

1. Lay around.
2. Whine about how my booty hurts.
3. Sleep.
4. Take Aleve.

Repeat.

Not very exciting. I did make it grocery shopping though, and our approximate bill is $75 for everything. I had a short list, since we're trying to eat stuff that's already in the house. Mostly we got fresh produce.

At Sunflower Market, I purchased:
egg whites
Greek yogurt
olive oil
juice
blackberries
cherries
bananas
lettuce
red onion
jalapeno
roma tomatoes
grape tomatoes
romaine hearts
english cucumber
limes
bell pepper

At the local farmer's market, we bought some yummy cheese: Hot Cowboy Cheddar, Blueberry Cheddar, and Mixed Fruit Cheddar. And a couple scones (blueberry lime and orange cranberry) and a chocolate chip cookie. Next week, we're going to try to buy all our fresh groceries at the farmer's market! They have bread, produce, meat, butter, yogurt, granola, peanut butter... just about anything you could ask for! So that'll be a fun challenge. Anything I can't find there I'll grab at Crest.

We've had a lot of hail and strong winds, so sadly I've lost a couple plants in my garden that need to be replaced ASAP. I lost a zucchini plant and a green bean bush, and maybe a poblano pepper. And my "mini pumpkin" plant turned out to be another SQAUSH plant... so now I have three squash plants. I guess we'll be eating a lot of squash this summer.

My garden is starting to give off mini harvests, so I'm excited to see it really grow. We've been eating some small tomatoes here and there from my Green Zebra tomato plant and my cherry tomato plant. My peppers are getting close, and so are the squash plants. Pretty soon we'll be able to "shop" the backyard, instead of paying for produce at the store!

Anyway, so that's what's up. I also bought something for the house, so once my husband gets it hung for me I'll have to show it off. Hopefully, that will be this week. Or soon. Or at all. Hear that, honey? ;)

Happy Monday!

a little bit of gardening

It's finally Friday!  Can anyone say:

I feel like this week has just drug on forever.  Does anyone else feel this way??

Last night after piano lessons, my hubs and I worked in the garden.  (He loves the name "hubs", don't you dear??)  Anyway, I had a lot of weeding to take care of, plus some seedlings to plant.  We ran up to the hardware store to get some ant spray (those pesky things won't get out of our backyard!  we've totally been infiltrated by the little pests) and ended up getting another bag of organic gardening dirt, a mini eggplant that already has a couple of the cuties hanging on its branches, and a French herbs mixed pot.  The French herbs mixed pot contained basil (mmmm!  breathe it in!), summer savory, thyme, and chives.  Only the basil looked good, but that's really what I was going after.  I can never have too much basil in the summer!

When we got back from the store, we had about 20 or 30 minutes until it would be too dark to work.  I did get all my seedlings planted and some weeding done.  I still need to do some more weeding (they seemed to take over out of nowhere!) but I'm very happy with how much we got done last night.

I need to do a real post about my garden!  But so far we have:
Spinach (it bolted from the heat so it had to go)
Broccoli (I harvested a bowlful last night!)
Red Cabbage, Green Cabbage
Garlic
Herbs (Basil, Thyme, Chives, Summer Savory, Sage, Rosemary, Lavendar, Variegated Oregano, Italian Oregano, Greek Oregano, Greek Basil, Genovese Basil)
Brussels Sprouts (although they still haven't produced... I'm just going to wait until they bolt and see what happens)
Celebrity Tomatoes, Cherry Tomatoes, Green Zebra Tomatoes, Early Girl Tomatoes, Patio Tomatoes
Jalapeno Pepper, New Mexico Peppers Green Bell Peppers, Sweet Green Peppers, Golden Bell Peppers, Purple Bell Peppers, Sweet Chocolate Brown Bell Peppers, Anaheim Peppers, Tomatillo Peppers, a few other peppers I can't remember
Zucchini
Yellow Squash
Mini Pumpkins (for an early harvest in September, will plant again in July for a later October/November harvest)
Green Beans
Strawberries
Mini Eggplants

Now I am NOT an expert garden at all.  I just picked a bunch of seedlings after researching, planted them the best I knew how, and I'm hoping for the best.  I call up to the local garden center with lots of questions.  They probably know me as well as the house alarm company by now.  I figure all I can do is try, and the worst that can happen is I don't get a good harvest.  But either way, I'm learning.  And the best way to learn something new is to just DO IT, right?

So far, the broccoli has been the best.  And the spinach.  I'm still harvesting broccoli.  To keep it from going to flower, I have to trim off the broccoli florets as soon as the little heads are the size of a pin-head.  The bigger you let the florets get, the more chance you have it's going to go to flower... especially now that we're experiencing 80-90 degree F weather during the day.

My yellow squash is also truckin' along.  I have two yellow squash seedlings that I planted; one already has 5 or so baby yellow squash, and the other has 3 with a lot of flowers ready to bloom.

Now, one thing that has me stumped is my Green Zebra tomato plant.  I'm not sure when to harvest the tomatoes...  they stay green, so I can't pick them when they turn the right color!  Everyone has told me I'll know by how they feel, but the first one I picked wasn't quite ready. 

credit: http://www.theartofseed.com/green-zebra-tomato/

My husband's workplace offers Saturday gardening classes to members and family, so I'm excited to attend a few of those this summer and fall!  Maybe I'll become an expert gardener...  Maybe. 

Alright, I've gone on far too long gabbing about my garden like it ain't no thang.  If you have any tips (especially concerning Green Zebra Tomatoes!) please share, I would love to hear.