The Ultimate Sunday

We did a lot of gardening this Sunday! I finally got off my ass and took an updated picture of my veggie garden. Everything is doing pretty fantastic all things considered. There is an empty square where some brocolli used to be...he didn't make it...the poor guy.


There are little baby tomatoes growing on two of the tomato plants! They are little guys.

We were able to harvest our first yellow squash! We ate it with a thrown together chicken stir-fry, it was pretty good...although I didn't like eating the seeds...they were like the size of pumpkin seeds. I will need to look up an awesome way to cook it for the next squash. This is the squash we ate, and the remaining squash in the garden.



We also pulled one of our carrots out to check its size. They are still relatively small so I'm going to leave them in the ground for a few more weeks. It was delicious :D


And then as for the Sunday gardening, we went out and got a few house plants and some herbs and flowers to spruce up the yard a bit. Steve picked out some basil, rosemary, and catnip to add to our peppermint plant by the fence...which is exploding by the way.


And I got some...crap what were they called again...they are some type of mini-rose-ish-thing with interesting looking leaves...It looks like a succulant mixed with roses. Anyway I thought they were cute so I filled my planters with them and set them on the front porch!



That's about it for this update. I've been getting lazy on the posts...But I'm glad whoever visits gets a chance to see whats up...when I post...:) Have a great week!

All the squares are occupied!

I've been lazy on the updates...but a garden is a rather slow and ongoing process :)

Here is my full garden with everything in it!!!!!


There have been a few fails in the garden...a lot of the onions are just pooping out on me. I'm not sure they will make it to harvest...But i will try again with them next year. And one of my broccoli transplants is sort of doomed as well.

I crushed some eggshells and coffee grounds and sprinkled them in the soil in hopes to provide some more natural nutrients to it.

My carrots and lettuce are doing fantastic! Check these doods out!



Awesome!!! The lettuce should be ready for some gradual harvesting really soon! I cant wait to have a salad made from greens from my garden :)

The mystery seeds have been identified! According to a local utilities repair man that came by the house for some maintenance, the mystery seeds are *drum roll*................. ZUCCHINI!!! He said that they will probably be ready for harvest in 2-3 weeks! Here is a picture of them and one of the little gourd dudes.



And last but not least...my tomato plants are doing fantastic. Here is a shot of them...


All in all, I'm having tons of fun with this project. And learning a lot too! More to come later!

As the summer approaches...!!!

Hello!

It has been a while since I made an update on my garden...but thats because plants take a while to mature! But I have some new pics for you to enjoy! First off we have the entire garden...Look how everything has grown so far!!!!......



My lettuce is doing rather well! And so are my carrots. I have transplanted my tomato seedlings...though very small still...into my garden. They are still in a small state of shock, but are hanging in there...we'll see how they do. Everything else is ok too. I am starting a weekly feeding with the nitrogen rich plant food for them until i get some good compost going in a compost bin (soon to come).

Also, the broccoli will be transplanted within the next week or so...I'll update on that as well.

Here is the cat grass! It grew VERY fast, and Zero, our other cat, enjoys noming it immensely. Here is a blurry pic...an attempt to get an action shot in evening lighting with a crap camera...yeah....


When I go out in the morning to clip the cat grass (to promote growth and maintenance) i give him the clippings and he goes to TOWN on them. The grass clippings are no more as soon as his furry little paws get a hold of them, I am telling you!


The mystery seeds....LET ME SHOW YOU THEM!


Big huh? Yeah I still have no idea what the heck they are. Someone said Pumpkin? WHO KNOWS!? We will surely find out eventually, wont we :)

Until next time....

Adios Amigos!

A Sunny Sunday Afternoon!

Good Day!

We decided to hang outside with the kitties and do some yard work this morning. First we did some laundry!


Then it was time to plant some new flowers we bought at the store yesterday. We got some Forget-Me-Not's and some Impatiens. Im not sure how the Forget-Me-Nots will do, they are an early spring blooming flower...but its worth a shot!


We planted the Forget-Me-Nots and the Impatiens in the large round container...


...and I also planted some bulbs I had inside that my mom gave me last year (again...experimenting...hoping they will grow) in the container with the mystery plants! (I think the mystery plants are some type of squash....?)


We had also planted some cat grass for the kitties last weekend and that is doing pretty well. It's still sparse but I'm going to wait until it thickens up before I let the kitties devour it. One of our cats, named Zero, will probably nom it all in one sitting...he loves cat grass!


The rest of my garden is doing well! I think the plant food helped and I may need to get some more nitrogen rich organic matter to mix in later down the road. Here is a little lettuce seed that is starting to sprout his new leaves!


One more mini project we attempted was to transplant some peppermint herbs we had in a small planter near the side of the house. They survived for almost a year with much neglect (poor guys) and so we decided to give them a new place in the ground. We started digging a hole in the ground to put them in...we are hoping that they spread along the fence...but when we started digging we found out that our soil in the yard is CRAP and really clayey...


We also found some weird mystery alien egg-bulbs in the ground I have no idea what they once were, or are...they were kind of squishy and really weird...


We threw some compost in the hole too to give it some nutrition and began to pull the peppermint out of its container and GEEZE it was one solid mass of roots and soil...it was bad...sorry, no pic of it though, here is the peppermint in its container...


We had to try and break it up a bit to get it in the ground. We'll keep you all updated on the peppermint now too!


Maybe I should change the name of my blog to Arix's Backyard! Any who, thanks for stopping by and we'll have more gardening excitement to come!!

Food for thought...

Yesterday I decided to give my garden plants some plant food. I mixed it with some warm water and watered them all in hopes to help the little guys grow. I'm beginning to think that the watering is fine, but perhaps the soil is slightly deprived of enough organic matter to nourish the plants. The plant food has nitrogen in it (good for plants) and if it seems to help them grow, my soil might be deprived of enough nitrogen. I need to check my book again and re-read up about the soil and the correct chemicals it requires for healthy grown.

I ordered a new and updated version of the Square Foot Gardening book, but it is out of stock at amazon, so I'm still awaiting arrival on that. I'm hoping it has new info about the square foot method.


Those darn mystery seeds are getting HUGE...I'm flustered at the fact that those darn things grew out of no where and are doing better than anything I'm actually tending to in my own garden! BAH...


Also, this past weekend (i didn't make a post because it's not going to be a permanent thing anymore) my garden had an encounter with pests! Thats right...I planted some new seeds last weekend and something came along and dug them all up and ate them!!!! I'm guessing it was a bird...but at the time i thought it might have been a skunk or a opossum. So i bought some garden wire and wrapped it all around my garden in hopes to keep them out...but after analyzing the situation and asking for some advise from friends, I've concluded an airborne strike upon my garden home base. So the wire will probably come off this weekend, or be reduced because its severely affecting the beauty of my garden!!!!! It looks like a garden prison!!

MAN DOWN!!!

Spinach is DOWN! That's right. It didn't grow. I'll need to try again in the cooler season. But hey it was worth a shot :)

I'll also be poking a few more carrot seeds in the ground this weekend.

And the Saga Continues...

The seedlings indoors are doing well! I transplanted all of the seedlings from the vermiculite into a container that contains actual soil so the seedlings can start getting nutrients from the soil to grow! I think I should have done this a bit earlier especially for the broccoli...because it seems stunned and wont grow. The tomatoes stopped growing for about a week and i was like DUH! They need food! So now they are starting to do much better. The broccoli is hanging in there...I hope they do ok.


Almost all of the lettuce outside is doing great too, they are still very small I think I may be watering them too often to I'm laying off on that a bit so they can grow. A few of them havn't sprouted, so I may plant some more seeds in there a few weeks from now if I don't see anything.

The carrots are starting to sprout too! They are cute.

And the cucumber is doing great! However, one of my cucumber seedlings didn't make it :( You win some you lose some right? My spinach is still in the ground...not sure how thats gonna go, we'll see.


I decided to germinate some more broccoli seeds indoors because I'm not sure if the ones in the containers inside are going to do well. I used just a sour cream cup with vermiculite since there were only 4 seeds.


Also, the container I moved near the house is sprouting two large unknown seedlings! They are the biggest thing growing out back right now! I think they may be some sort of squach...but for now, they are dubbed..........THE MYSTERY SEEDS!!


More to come later! Thanks for stopping by!