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Some setbacks, and some progress.

Category: Adventures in Gardening | Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2014 12:39 am

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The last time I updated our garden was doing pretty well, and plants were coming along nicely. I was so excited that my zucchini plant had survived and we even had a couple of zucchini coming. Then the little black bugs appeared on my watermelon, and we entered the Black Phase of the Garden.

I will be the first to admit that I am not good at following directions. In fact, I'm terrible most of the time, and I know for sure that this was one of those times. I found a recipe for aphid/black bug spray and made some up for the garden, and then I went to town protecting the watermelon. Amazingly, the watermelon survived, somewhat, although we've lost some leaves and the dang aphids are back. We DO have three watermelon coming though, see:


watermelon! 8.17.14 ( photo / image / picture from WeeGreenSheepie's Garden )

That's the two I'm really excited about, I found the other one tonight when I was out weeding and sorting out stuff. I was able to move more of the watermelon over as the zucchini finally gave up the ghost. The bigger zucchini was torn up by a bird, and when I went to gently pull it off (all withered and sad, sigh), most of the plant came with it. It looked absolutely terrible, too; as we just had a pretty wet day, and it had been watered not too long before that, I think it just drowned. :( Well, we'll have better luck next year, as I'll be a bit more careful with them. Funny how our neighbors had zucchini too, didn't do a thing for them and their plants had enormous zucchini! So jealous!

I've got many more positives, though, so while disappointed in my zukes, I'm immensely proud and excited about my peppers and tomatoes. The tomatoes are coming along slowly but surely, but my banana peppers? The plant is EXPLODING with peppers! I counted 25 tonight that are various shapes and sizes, and there are at least a dozen more about to start. Yay! I love banana peppers! They like to hide under their leaves, but I managed to get one pic of some of them:


banana peppers 8.17.14 ( photo / image / picture from WeeGreenSheepie's Garden )

YUM! :D My bell peppers are coming along too, there are four of them growing right now and I'm hoping they come to full fruit:


green bell peppers (so far) 8.17.14 ( photo / image / picture from WeeGreenSheepie's Garden )

And then I saw our very first ladybug, sitting on our watermelon vine. I was so happy to see him, and I told him that he and his little friends are more than welcome in our garden, there are plenty of aphids to go around:


Ladybug! 8.17.14 ( photo / image / picture from WeeGreenSheepie's Garden )

I think next year I will import some ladybugs, if they don't show up on their own. I will hopefully have some good progress in the next couple of weeks - happy gardening, everyone! :)


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First Garden Ever. Really.

Category: Adventures in Gardening | Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2014 9:13 pm

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My husband and I bought our second home last August and one of the main reasons we bought our home was so we could put in a garden. We have a larger back yard with a good deal of sun, so we thought Ooo, a garden would be lovely! (Actually, it was more me than him, because he knew he would have to build it, ha)

We planted our garden on May 24:


All done! Grow, garden, grow! ( photo / image / picture from WeeGreenSheepie's Garden )

Two watermelon plants, two cucumber plants, two zucchini, four bell peppers, two tomato, a banana pepper and a cherry tomato plant. Obviously I didn't plan well or really know what I was doing (plus I think I was a bit hungry when plant shopping) so we just kind of tossed a mish-mash in and hoped for the best.

Which was good, because by July 5, this is what was left:


July 5-the aftermath of overwatering ( photo / image / picture from WeeGreenSheepie's Garden )

I learned the hard way about overwatering. The cucumbers and one of the zucchini pretty much rotted away and almost everything else was struggling. The cherry tomato plant and banana pepper plant were producing rather well, but I really thought we would lose the rest. So we weeded it really well, took a big fork to the soil to chunk it up and cut back on the watering. Meanwhile, our patio potted garden was doing well:


Patio garden ( photo / image / picture from WeeGreenSheepie's Garden )

We're trying to attract hummingbirds and bees to our yard; we've got hummers already, but they don't hang around much as they love our neighbor's big honeysuckle bush at the side of their house. They do like to check us out though! :)

By the end of July, we're starting to see some progress, especially the watermelon:


Creeping melons ( photo / image / picture from WeeGreenSheepie's Garden )

And then poof! Our garden exploded, so much so that the watermelons were tangled in the bird netting:


Tangled, non-Disney style. ;) ( photo / image / picture from WeeGreenSheepie's Garden )

And also taking over the garden:


August 5-exploding with green ( photo / image / picture from WeeGreenSheepie's Garden )

My next battle is getting the watermelon aphids off, and putting a layer of mulch down; I know, I know, we should have done that before, but we're just learning this stuff! It looks like we're going to have a good crop of watermelon, some nice zucchini and a lot of peppers, yay! I'm not sure about the tomatoes, I'm watching them and we've got some little green ones; they're just not getting much bigger. The banana peppers are about to start popping again, and the cherry tomatoes rarely make it back to the house, hee.

We are planning on adding two more 4x6 beds, with one or two 5x5 beds; I think watermelon and pumpkin might be in their very own 4x6 beds so they can go all over. It's certainly going to be a fun journey, and our daughter is learning a lot about gardening, and the joys of growing and eating your own food!



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