A First Humble Offering

Read Full Post »

Day 31

Janie & Josh

We arrived home from a 5-day trip to Georgia, nervous about how our garden had fared. We were pleasantly surprised to find that everything had grown beautifully and our dormant apple trees were stretching their new leaves out!

The girls dubbed the trees Janie and Josh. Janie’s leaves are covered with a soft white fuzz, which makes her a girl, I’m told.

Josh's dark green "boy" leaves

Janie's fuzzy "girly" leaves reach towards the sun

muskmelon

For those who don’t know, muskmelon is a relative of the cantaloupe. Those lovely orange fruits in the grocery store are actually a variety of muskmelon. Apparently they think the word cantaloupe sounds better. ::shrug:: Go figure.

tomato

We planted three varieties of tomato — all of which are doing amazingly well!

bell pepper

This is called Carnival Blend. It is supposed to be a mix that grows even purple peppers! (Peter picked a peck of purple peppers?)

green beans

These are such beautiful seedlings! I love the thick, fuchsia stems! I can’t wait to eat them. I LOVE fresh green beans!

peas

It’s absolutely magical how peas grow. The leaves unfold from the center and the little tendrils creep out from the ends of the leaf pairs. So beautiful!

corn

Yummy, yummy, yummy. I love corn so very much, and I can’t stand the GMO crap in the grocery store. How amazing it will be to have delicious sweet corn!!!! I’m drooling already.

spinach

The spinach started off strong, but some of it seems to have wilted away. I think it may have been the 5 day water deficit.

 

attempting to sprout pecans

We brought some backyard pecans back from Georgia, so I thought I’d give some of them a shot at sprouting. You never know, right? 🙂

winter squash

My little plant is growing up! Look at the wilting baby leaves. I think the baby leaf fairy will have to come and leave some fresh compost under its pillow. 😉

carrots

These are a mixed color carrot. Purples, reds, oranges, whites, and yellows! I think the kids will love seeing the different colors coming out of the ground like magic.

lettuce

This is our mystery plant. At the end of the day on Day 1, I forgot to label the last yogurt cup. I’m fairly certain that this is buttercrunch lettuce. 🙂

Read Full Post »

Hooray!

Our little garden grew today!

Our tomatoes are now caged. Not that they’re big enough to need them yet, but we were able to get them. So in they went!

And in other news…our apple trees arrived today! How exciting is that?! We ordered one granny smith and one fuji, which do well in the zone where our land is. Once we get the land cleared and prepped, we’ll plant them up there.

Caroline helped me remove them from their old pots and replant them in larger ones. She loved digging in the dirt, and we got lucky enough to discover some red worm hitchhikers in the tree roots! They are now happily pigging out in our compost bin.

It was so scary pruning them! I watched the fantastic pruning video by groworganic.com, but it was still so strange cutting my tree!

I think they look beautiful!

The sky looked pretty phenomenal, too, just before sunset. And check out this bud!

I can’t wait to see how they grow once spring arrives!

Read Full Post »

Rain – The Talk of the Town

I want to be where the talk of the town is about last night when the sun went down,

Yeah, and the trees all dance and the warm wind blows in that same old sound.

And the water below gives a gift to the sky,

And the clouds give back every time they cry,

And make the grass grow green beneath my toes…

And if the sun comes out, I’ll paint a picture all about the colors I’ve been dreaming of…

The hours just don’t seem enough to put it all together…

Maybe it’s as strange as it seems.

 

(Thank you, Jack Johnson, for your beautiful song. I cry every time I hear it. Yeah, I’m a sap like that. Last night’s rain, today’s glorious silver sky, and the beauty of my garden this morning inspired the connection.)

 

Read Full Post »

Growth

my little sprout

Today is day 15 of our little garden.

Adam, Caroline, and I took an evening stroll through the garden to see how things were doing, and we discovered beautiful little emerging plants that hadn’t been there this morning! Life is amazing. ❤

6 days ago, we planted our first in-ground seeds. Many of them made an appearance today:

corn

 

sneaky halloween pumpkin

peas? spinach?

 

I…er…forgot to mark the rows.

 

yellow squash

The carrots and romaine are starting to sprout, as well…

 

romaine

carrots

The bell peppers are finally sprouting in their little cups…

 

bell peppers

The muskmelons and tomatoes that I transplanted (eagerly and early) are (fortunately) doing very well!

 

muskmelon

tomato

 

And the winter squash are absolutely glorious!

 

winter squash

 

Life is a magic…thing…yeah, yeah, yeah! 😉

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read Full Post »

Our Growing Garden, Week Two

How exciting! A few hours’ work together, and we have a beautiful garden (and a healthy dose of vitamin D, to boot!).

We planted sweet corn, peas, yellow beans, green beans, spinach, zucchini, and yellow crookneck squash. My mouth is watering just thinking about it all. =09

At the end, on the left, is a row for the muskmelon and tomatoes.

We used Just Natural organic compost and garden soil from Lowe’s to amend our sand. It really made it rich and beautiful. We also got two trays of marigolds from them to use as a pretty visual border and natural pest control.

Keep your fingers crossed for us!

Read Full Post »

The Miracle of Life, Days 5 and 6…

muskmelon

tomatoes

winter squash

buttercrunch lettuce

Read Full Post »

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary…

...how does your garden grow?

Just in the nick of time, we’ve finally been able to start our garden!

The kids and I went on an expedition to Lowe’s yesterday to get soil and additional seeds. We were pleasantly surprised by their organic seed supply! So, after ringing up our supplies at Lowe’s, realizing that the baby had removed my wallet from my bag at home, driving back and forth to retrieve it, ringing the items up a second time, actually paying for it this time, and driving one final time home (after essential trips to Starbucks and Publix) – we got down to business!

We triple checked our references (for the record: Farmer’s Almanac, Month-by-Month Gardening in Florida, and Vegetable Gardening in Florida), triangulated their advice into a gardening plan, and located as many mostly-portable-and-temporary-planting-units as possible.

After much digging, mixing, planting, teaching, and learning…here is our itty bitty first garden.

Day One…

Our Motley Crew of Planting Vessels

Day Two…

The Nursery

The Squash Stronghold!

It was really hard to convince Caroline that this was no longer a sandbox. 🙂

Carrots and Romaine!

The kids even decided to make their own "garden".

We all had a great time starting our itty bitty garden – especially Kaitie. She was glued to my side, loving being in the dirt. 🙂

 

Read Full Post »