May 6, 2011

Garden Update

About 6 weeks ago my husband and I started our garden, we had them all growing in a "jiffy greenhouse" sitting on our kitchen table.  Last time I posted about it we only had a couple sprouts.  Things have progressed quite well since then.
We currently have 38 surviving plants and last night we planted 10 more (6 Bell Peppers and 4 more Tomatoes.)

My favorite investment this year has been my greenhouse.

We bought it at ALCO for $30.  It's perfect.  It took me about 5 minutes to put it together, it keeps the plants nice and warm and allows them to get more sunlight.  They've exploded since we put them in there last week.
The only down side is that the top shelf gets Very Warm, and it killed almost all of our sunflowers.
Fortunately all the vegetables are doing great!



For the moment all the plants are still in SOLO cups, except for the Dill, which we've planted in bright colorful pots.


We put a few landscaping bricks on the bottom shelf to keep it from tipping over in our wind storms.

Banana Peppers: (Center) 

Sunflower:
One of the surviving 3 out of 25.
 (We plan on replanted a whole bunch of sunflowers in the garden, maybe they'll do better out there.) 

Roma Tomatoes:
 (They've grown over 2 inches since we put them in the greenhouse.)

Yellow Squash: 

Green Bean:
We only had one do well at all, once again, plan on planting more seeds in the garden. 

Cucumber: 

Tomatoes: 

Pumpkin: (back)
Dill (pink pot.)
(I'm so sad cause we found one of our pumpkins destroyed already!  A bug had eaten the stem clear through, thus all the white powder sprinkled on our plants, it's bug poison.) 
In the actual garden we'll be planting: radish, onion, green beans, sunflowers, and corn in pots we also have watermelon.

We can move all the plants into the garden after the last frost, which is averagely May 17.  We'll wait until the last week in May or first few days of June to plant.  Here's our prospective garden:

We're going to make some sort of border around the edge of the garden, not sure how yet.
We'll also get a few bags of Miracle Grow Garden Soil and till it into the dirt, along with some homegrown compost.  That will help our plants significantly in our terrible Indiana clay.
All the way from the edge of the patio (about 3 feet out) to the three posts in the back by the forest.
It'll be about 12' x 25'

If you'll notice that picture above, my backyard is mostly dirt.  It's terrible!
I'm super excited today because I looked outside and I can see a thin layer of green starting to cover my yard:
We planted 100lbs of grass seed back there last week, in two weeks we'll have a beautiful lawn!

I'm so excited for all my vegetables, just think.  Salsa, Pickles, Pickled Banana Peppers, plus all the fresh vegetables we'll have to eat this summer!
In August we can visit the apple orchards and collect apples for pie filling, applesauce and brandied apples!
I'm hoping to go pick my own berries this year too.  Blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries.  Oh I'm so excited for warmer weather!

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1 comment:

Susan said...

Yay! I love gardens! I have some tomato plants in my window, they don't hold a candle to yours! Maybe I should get one of those green houses.