Our Little Garden 2014

This year we have made a lot of changes in the garden as well as a few new additions. I have a personal goal to grow wonderful tomatoes this year and am following the same tomato pruning and sucker reducing plan as Elise at Elisejoy.com.  ( Thanks for the great pruning ideas) Last year we had so much rain that it was almost impossible to get into the garden unless you got out the rowboat, everything got way too much water to survive. Our solution was to dig out the grassy patch and fill it with rocks to raise the path a little bit. We have had a lot or rain lately so we have been able to test out our theory and eventually had to add a few more bags to level things out. We have finally gotten it to the right height and even after 2 days of heavy rain we can get into the garden without boots or a boat. I switched up the mix in the garden this year too. We only had one flower in our garden last year. This year we are trying some natural pest deterrents and companion planting to increase our crop this year.

We are still using the square foot gardening mindset and trying to maximize our small space for the best return. I learned a few things last year from some major failures. We have tried to grow tomatillos, either transplanted or grown from seed, the past 3 years. The seedlings never survived and last year we found some starts at our local nursery and tried one of those…. it grew beautifully. We had  a very vigorous  healthy plant with tons of blooms and strong branches, but we never saw any fruit forming. In July I started to get a bit nervous and started researching, turns out you really need 2 plants so that they can cross pollinate each other. So we know we can care for and grow the plants we just need more than one. We also had an epic battle with cutworms last year and lost almost all my seedlings and starts in the first month of our growing season last year. This winter we did a lot of prep work in the dirt to try to eliminate any little creatures that might be growing in there. We also saved as many toilet paper and paper towel rolls as we could  so that we could try putting those around our little starter plants to protect them in the beginning.

We added a fun little spot of Lula to play this year and tried a sweet pea and sugar snap pea tee-pee for her. She picked out the seeds for the flowers and helped me plant them. She is very excited about putting ribbons on the top in the summer and I am thinking about weaving some scrap material  through the bamboo stakes to help the vines climb and make it a little more cheerful. kind of  like this little weaving how-to for kids from Acorn Pies.   I’m also planning on some ladybug habitats like these.

Watering the day away

                     
                                 Watering the Veggies from Kathryn Van Bourgondien on Vimeo.

I think she could spend all day watering the garden and never get tired. It's the first thing she wants to do when he gets home from school. Straight out to the backyard! It looks like we will have lots of veggies this summer. 

Our “little” Garden

 

The garden has had a lot of changes recently. It has almost doubled in size and it has grown so much food I am starting to wonder if we can actually eat it. We have had much better luck than last year.  I kind of gave up on the tomato plan last year, but this year the early attention and making sure we are keeping to 1 vertical “vine” really helped us. We have never had so many HUGE tomatoes so early. We have 4-5 softball size super steaks 10-12 tennis ball pineapple tomatoes and even the Sungold mini’s have responded well to the technique. We are really happy with the way that the square foot gardening plan has worked.  The herbs are almost out of control now. We have already harvested around 20 cups of  Basil to make pesto and I think we could do another round in a week or so  We did loose our tomatillos and our corn did not do very well this year. I think it got blocked by the huge basil plant. Next up is finding a good recipe for pickled jalapenos. We should have enough for a couple of pints soon.

4/23/2011

     5/28/2011

6/23/2011

Our Little Garden 2011

 

      I finally got around to getting the garden started today. We took an early morning trip to the closest nursery and picked up a few of the plants that never materialized from my seeds. I set up the net for the vining plants, got my tomato cages in place and then started planting. This summer we are planting Pineapple tomatoes, Supersteak tomatoes, San Marzano tomatoes, Pineapple Tomatillos, Red potatoes, Sweet Corn, Sugar snap peas, Soybeans, Butternut Squash, Zuccchini, Pickling cucumbers, Sweet Cucumbers, Sweet Peppers, Jalapenos, Mini golden peppers,  Eggplant, Romaine lettuce, Bibb lettuce, and Iceberg lettuce.

       I also redid our herb garden, starting from scratch. Our Rosemary tree was so root bound we almost couldn’t get it out of the container! I replanted a new rosemary in a more manageable size and added a few of our standard old friends, thyme, sage, basil, and mint.  I also added a few other things that I have never grown, tarragon, lavender and  chives. Hopefully everything comes up soon!

Our Little Garden 2011

 

 

Our little garden got its start this week! I only planted three of each variety this year after last year’s surplus of plants with no home. Hopefully we will have better luck with the Pineapple Tomatillos and the Pistou Basil. I’m also trying Lavender and mint from seed for the first time. I also moved our little seed spa to our guest room upstairs. I think the kitchen may have been too chilly last year and the guest room gets the same amount of sun but stays about 5 degrees warmer. I just hope our little friends don’t get too toasty in their heated sauna.

Our little garden isn’t so little anymore

We got back from a mini vacation to visit family in New York and found a forest in our backyard. We have corn taller than I am, tons of tomatoes, peppers starting to grow, cucumbers everywhere, and even a little watermelon starting on it’s way!

     

We harvested our radishes and turnips as well!

our garden this summer

This spring we built a new garden for our vegetables this summer. We are using the square foot gardening method as our inspiration. Basically you build a box, fill it with a special soil mix, and fit a 1 foot by 1 foot grid over the top to help in the planting and growing process.

Our grid is made of  eyehooks and nylon string.  Our main box is 8 ft x 2 ft so we have 16 squares to plant in in the main box and we have 2 separate boxes that are 2 ft x 2ft, each of those have 4 squares to plant in . So all together we have 24 squares to plant in all summer long.

Then in each square you plant anywhere  from 1 to 32 plants or seeds all depending on the item you are planting. We planted 3 types of radishes ( 16 per square), turnips( 9 per square) , 2 types of carrots( 16 per square)  scallions ( 16 per square) and strawberries( 1 per square)  in the 2 smaller boxes.

This picture is from 2 weeks after planting the seeds 

  This is from last weekend ( about 4 weeks after planting). We have had some super warm weather lately and everything has been growing  like crazy In the large box we planted 2 kinds of cucumbers ( 2 per square), asparagus beans ( 4 per square), Sweet corn ( 4 per square), Cilantro ( 1 per square), Sugar Baby Watermelon  (1 plant in 2 squares), Parsley ( 2 per square), and Soybeans (5 per square), all from seed. And my precious little seedlings got planted next.   Jalapeño ( 1 per square), Summer Sweet Peppers ( 1 per square), Celeriac Root ( 2 per square), Baby Belle Peppers ( 1 per square), 4th of July Slicer Tomatoes ( 1 per square), San Marzano Tomatoes ( 1 per square), and last but not least Pineapple Tomatillos ( 1 per square).

And today our plants are growing even more. We will be building a trellis out of electrical conduit and nylon netting soon for those cucumbers and tomatoes to grow on.

 

 

 

perfect little garden…

from tortoiselovesdonkey’s on etsy, these would be the perfect little garden for our tiny little kitchen window sill. I have recently become very interested in making m own terrariums and having them in the house year round. My grandmother used to keep a terrarium in the kitchen and took care of it meticulously. I would love to start my own little terrariums someday….

I am also thinking of using a wall mounted fish bowl to make a terrarium, or maybe these….

from pottery barn. I could see a fee of these on an ornament tree or a strong twig in the house year round.

Our first yellow tomatoes

and a few mini sweet peppers. That’s right- the ones that I started from a tiny little seed have finally sprouted some fruit. We have had a little bit of a pest problem on the tomato plants since I have been away and we will probably only get a handful of these lovely yellow guys. Those pesky hornworms can be a pain. 

Meyer lemons, key limes, tomatoes and sweet peppers, oh my

    Our Meyer lemon tree has really started to grow recently and we couldn’t be more excited. We started off with what basically looked like a twig in dirt with a few leaves. Now only a few months later we have the beginnings of a little tree complete with clusters of buds!The key lime is doing well, it took off in the beginning and now it has slowed down a bit. It is definitely more than a twig in the dirt, but no buds yet.  The key lime is a bit younger than the lemon, so we can give it a bit more time before a stern talking to about its progress.

 

Our tomato plants are almost out of control. We just can;t seem to keep up with all the new deliciously ripe little guys that spring up everyday. These are just the ones that I picked when I got home from work today. I noticed today that we also have our first few little tomatoes on our yellow pear plant (as if we didn’t have enough tomatoes already).

Last but not least this week we also noticed that the first little pepper has sprung up on our baby sweet pepper plant.  It seems that we might have a few more of these than we expected as well. I am super excited about this little guy because I started this plant from a seed and he went from a soggy  peat ball to a mini little sprout and now it looks like he will be producing some beautiful peppers. This is the first time I have grown anything from a seed and I got a little scared by all the warnings about how picky and temperamental seedlings could be. The first group I started (sweet peas) did really well and eventually this little sweet pepper made its way.

   Next year’s garden is already being planned and there are going to be some big changes… we are digging a “real” garden including a stacked box in the back for easy access. Container gardening is great and worked beautifully for us this summer so I’m sure that we will have a few containers here and there as well.  I am looking forward to trying out pineapple tomatillos, edible flowers, soybeans, and possibly some onions and garlic next summer and I will definitely be raising a lot more plants from seed!

Garden Update Week 6

 

That was our garden week one. This week the garden outgrew its old spot and we had to split things up a bit. A few pots here and few pots there.

 

Our eggplant has started to bloom and we have the beginning of our first little eggplant. The tomatoes are growing fantastically and we have lots of new little guys popping up everywhere.

 

Our first cucumbers are starting as well we just found a bunch at the base of our cucumber plant and we have our first little strawberries!