Garden Bragger

When I was out for my friends birthday the other day, we got talking about gardens. I am roud of my garden and I feel like my garden (after a slow start) is doing pretty good this year. After talking about our gardens, I felt like quite the old lady because I then proceeded to bust out my camera and show pictures of my garden. I wasn't sharing pictures of my kids or my dogs or my vacation....only pictures of my garden. I am officially a garden bragger.

It has been awhile since I originally posted about our garden because we have been traveling and visiting the beach. I have definitely learned the hard way about some of the plants that I had tried to grow for the first time.

Here is my garden in June. About a month after planting. Cucumbers to the left, tomatoes on the bottom of the picture, hot banana peppers, broccoli, cauliflower and jalapenos in middle.

 First batch (of only 3 batches) of spinach. I only got to eat it 3 times before I killed it all by over pruning.

Note to self: invest some time into studying up on spinach growing next year

This is the start of our cauliflower plants. They are deceiving. I thought that each plant in my garden should grow big and strong. But that's not the case with cauliflower. You need to pick it before the head of the cauliflower starts to seperate and flower. Well, I let grow too long and it got all yucky. I later learned to pick it early and once you pick it, that's it. They do not regrow another head of cauliflower. Live and Learn.

First banana peppers! We have grown these before so these are safe in the garden :).

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Here is our garden today! Growing grandly!

The cucumbers are in the back. Watermelons and cantaloupes are in the front. Both of which I have "trained" to grow up the chicken wire. Tomatoes are on the far right (and left, but not pictured). The big plants on the left are broccoli. As you can see, the cauliflower is gone. But it will actually give me more room to pick the 100's of cucumber pickles that are growing!

I am so excited to make salsa and canned pickles! I will keep you up to date on the growing of our garden (if I am not too busy with all my beach bumming).

Stay cool!

Let's Get This Garden Started

I love summer so much! Ok, I know it isn't truly summer yet, but this Memorial Day weekend was warm enough to be called summer and it was the start of our vegetable garden.

This will be our 3rd year having a vegetable garden and I keep learning more and more every year.
We (meaning my husband while I sat back and drank wine and told him he was doing a good job) expanded the garden this year. More space = more vegetable goodness!

The past two years we just bought whatever starter plants we wanted at Remus Farms in Hobart, IN and put them in what we thought was a good layout. Last year our tomato plants were gargantuan and over took our garden and some of our peppers didn't grow. But we yielded lots of cucumber pickles. Which I happily canned for the first time and loved doing it too! This year I found a book at the library called Square Foot Gardening.

 This book got lots of vegetable growing ideas in my head, such as how many vegetables to plant per square foot based on how big your garden is and how much you will actually grow and actually use. It also gave a lot of great ways to grow plants such as cucumbers, cantaloupes, and watermelons upward rather than on the ground. I followed a  lot of the advice in the books on where to put my plants in the garden also. It was a bit cramped last year and I tried to spread the plants out a little more this year. But my mind sees these small plants and makes me think I need to cram more and more in the open space. I always forget that plants grow, and some grow big! So my mantra for planting today was leave space for growth.

Beginning of our expanded garden. My husband does a special combo mix of soil, peet moss, and manure. Which is another wonderful tidbit I got from the above mentioned book. My husband has done this every year with his own special mixture. The book gives great examples on how to follow the authors mixture.

The starter plants I got this year are 2 different types of cucumber pickles (8 total), 2 different types of tomato plants (8 total), hot banana peppers (2), jalapeno peppers (6), cantaloupe (2), watermelon (2), spinach (4), broccoli (4), and cauliflower (4). The last three I have never grown before so I am excited to see how they will turn out.

The finished planted garden!! The back row are the cucumbers. The tomatoe plants are on either sides. The canteloupe are front left followed by hot banan peppers, and spinach. The bottom right are the watermelons, then jalapeno peppers, and then cauliflower. The broccoli is in the middle.

All my spaced (hopefully spaced far enough apart) rows. We still need to add something for the cucumbers, cantaloupes and watermelons to grow upwards on. After that, it is just a little organic fertilizer, watering, pruning, and reaping the rewards of hard work! I am hoping to continue my canning of salsa and dill pickles this year too.

Just thought I would throw in a shot of how dirty I got today with all my planting!!

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I hope to take a picture week by week so you can see my garden's progress. I am sure my journey with a larger garden will lead me to have some tips and pointers for any gardeners out there.

I hope your green thumb is itching to get some planting done on your end!