How Does Your Garden Grow?

Since I haven't been blogging regularly, it would help to explain why......

What's that? A Garden!!!! I, personally, have been gardening for ohhhh.... 10 years or so? Now my husband is just as obsessed with gardening :) Each year is such a learning experience and each year it gets bigger and better. We have progressed from a simple garden of tomato's and pepper's to now interweaving crops and many different varieties. We used to just run to the store and buy the plants but now we are learning about and have started a lot of our garden from seed. This year, I'm trying to learn about seed saving so that we can harvest our seeds for next year and possibly participate in a seed exchange locally! Hopefully in a few years, we will have all seeds saved and be advanced enough to have to spend virtually NOTHING to start our garden! We make our own compost and this year we were able to use our OWN mulch on 1/4th of the garden for weed control!

Is that a picnic table? Yeah, we don't get to eat on it too often anymore :) It has become more of a work station :) We actually might look into purchasing another one because we LOVE to eat outside in the summer but we also love having this one to work on so we aren't killing our backs bending over all the time :) My husband is the "flower" person, I am the "veggie" person.... nice match huh? So a lot of these pots are his, growing flowers from seeds he has saved....

So many have asked what we have planted? Well lets break it down a bit....

Above is what it looked like in the VERY beginning....

Now it's FULL! I have created a "list" of our garden inhabitants for the year and

I have included links... LOTS of links. If we bought the seeds from Seed Saver's Exchange (SSE for future reference) then the link takes you to their page of information on that plant, if we didn't buy it there, then the link takes you to images of what the plant is like.

Tomato's (Total of 12 plants)

1- Three Moonglow plants started from seeds by Seed Saver Exchange (SSE)

2- Four Eva Purple Ball plants started from seeds by SSE

3- Two Mr. Stripey plants bought at Teske's

4- One Beefsteak plant bought at Teske's

5- One Jubilee Heirloom plant bought at Teske's

6- One Lemon Boy plant bought at Teske's

(Mr. Stripey)

(Eva Purple Ball)

Pepper's: (Total of 7 plants)

1- Three Red Buran plants started from seeds by SSE

2- One Sweet Banana plant bought at Teske's

3- One Orange Sun Bell plant bought at Teske's

4- One Costa Rican Sweet Red Hybrid plant bought at Teske's

5- One Purple Beauty plant bought at Teske's

(Variety of Peppers)

Vegetables: (Lot's of variety here)

1- Five Premium Late Flat Dutch Cabbage plants from seeds bought at SSE (NOTE: I think we planted these a bit too early so may have to replant in the fall)

2- One row of Scarlet Nantes Carrots (Orange) from seeds bought at SSE

3- One row of Dragon Carrots (Purple carrots) from seeds bought at SSE

4- One row Amish Snap Peas from seeds bought at SSE

5- One row Climbing French Green Beans from seeds bought at SSE

6- Two Homemade Pickles Cucumber plants bought at Teske's

7- One mound of Mexican Sour Gherkins started from seeds bought at SSE (NOTE: I have one bloom that is struggling so I waited until temps increased and I have reseeded)

8- One mound of A+C Pickling Cucumbers started from seeds bought at SSE (NOTE: Same as Gherkins, I have reseeded)

9- Eight Packman Broccoli plants bought at an unknown store by John

10-Six Cauliflower plants purchased from Nostalgia Farm's at our local Farmer's Market

11- Six Napa Cabbage plants bought at an unknown store by John

12- One potato plant in a bag received as a Mother's Day gift from Izeah :)

Notes: We also purchased Calabrese Broccoli seeds and Early Snowball Cauliflower seeds from SSE but for some unknown reason, we had trouble starting them from seed this spring. Our plan is to do another round in the fall from seed to have a double crop.

(Amish Snap Peas)

(Climbing French Green Beans)

(Homemade Pickles Cucumber plants)

(A carrot seedling)

(Cauliflower)

(Premium Late Flat Dutch Cabbage)

(Napa Cabbage plants)

(Broccoli plants)

Greens and Lettuce:

1- One row of Five Color Silverbeet Swiss Chard started from seeds bought at SSE

2- One row of Vivian Lettuce (a type of romaine) started from seeds we purchased 2 years ago

3- One row of Little Caeser Lettuce started from seeds we purchased 2 years ago

4- One row of Seed Savers Lettuce Mixture started from seeds bought at SSE

5- Eight Arugula plants purchased at Home Depot (NOTE: These are bolting, see what I wrote below)

6- Two Fire Lettuce plants we received from Let Us Farm Inc. at Fun Night at school

7- One row of America Spinach started from seeds bought at SSE (NOTE: I had to plant these twice, first time had no results, 2nd time, I have Spinach!!!!!)

(Five Color Silverbeet Swiss Chard)

(Seed Saver's Lettuce Mixture plants)

(Little Caesar lettuce plants)

(Vivian Lettuce plants)

(Fire Lettuce plant)

(Izeah's Potato plant)

We also have a variety of potted plants and herbs:

1- Two pots of Strawberry Plants purchased online by John

2- Two pots of Sweet Basil plants purchased at Home Depot

3- One pot of Oregano we have had for 2 years and it's still growing!

4- One pot with a Red Rubin Basil plant bought at Teske's

5- One pot with two Purple Basil plants bought at Teske's

6- One pot of Cilantro started from seeds we have had for 2 years

7- Three mounds of Garlic we received from John's Dad

8- Three mounds of Chives we received from John's Dad

(Garlic)

(Strawberries)

(Oregano)

(Red Rubin Basil on left, Purple Basil on right)

(Sweet Basil plants)

(Chives)

(Cilantro)

As I talked a little bit above... the below pic is Arugula. We are going to attempt seed saving this year ourselves.... this pic was taken about 5 days ago and shows how it is bolting... but in the last few days, there are now seed pods on it!!! The plants are leaning over so I'm going to assume the pods may burst soon so I will be working to harvest them following this website's advice. I will be reseeding through out the summer for tender Arugula and hopefully have a great crop in the fall when the temps wind down a bit!

(Bolting Arugula)

And just for fun.... here's my flower lovin' hubby and his "I love this shit and hate this shit" fun face ;)

Oh yeah, we grow kids too (hahaha) Apparently they need a lot of water to grow :)

So after what seems to be the worlds longest post on gardening, that's our garden in a nutshell. This year we are going to start keeping records of where our plants have come from, how they have produced and if we harvest the seeds from them for another year...

We also had a small sad disaster.... we had storms with straight line winds blow through early Thursday morning and it bent all of our broccoli and snapped 2 cauliflowers clean off at the roots :( I have staked the broccoli up now though and it's just fine :) I replanted the remaining roots of the cauliflower and now we're waiting to see if they take hold! First day they looked bad but today they might have hope!!! Cross your fingers!

Happy Gardening everyone! :)