Over the weekend we went to Lowe's to get a few things for the yard. Alyssa and Samara were playing on a cart and it bumped Mara's chin pretty hard. Hard enough that a trip to the urgent care center was in store. She ended up getting her chin glued together, thank God she didn't have to have stitches! Anyways while Micah and Grandpa took her to the urgent care clinic Grandma, Alyssa, Nattie, and I stayed at Lowes to get all the stuff we needed. So I ended up deciding that now was as good a time as any to plant a garden! Yes, last minute decision as far as buying everything for it but I'd wanted a garden for a long time. My husband is amazing! He goes with me on these things... I think he has had a lot of fun building a garden with me.
The ground in our area is ROCK. So we decided to build an above ground garden. This meant that we'd have to buy a lot of dirt.
At the farmer's market we bought some tomato plants and a red marconi plant, along with some garlic flavored chives. This is our purple tomato plant. We decided to put two tomato plants in pots near the house.
These are yellow pear tomatoes. I'm excited about these. Maybe because there's already some growing on the vines.
Micah started tilling the ground where the garden was going to go. He had a hard time doing it. Like I said before our ground is rock. Here is the proof. These rocks came out of the ground. We tilled more than what the above ground garden was going to take on purpose so we could buy another above ground garden at the end of the season and put it up. I want to start out with something I feel I can keep up with first and then get bigger.
Old Grandpa telling Micah how to work the tiller. Micah struggled, the thing just bounced everywhere. He is such a good sport though! He did an excellent job getting it done the way I wanted it.
Taking a break... I am quite the slave driver! BACK TO WORK!!! ;-)
We had to put these metal things around the tomatoes so they wouldn't fall over. If you look closely (click on the picture to enlarge it and then click the back button to come back) you'll see the little tomatoes on the vines.
Micah got done tilling pretty late. Thank you baby you are awesome!!! We put the edging stuff around it to keep the grass out. Hopefully it works. It works pretty good for our bush bed out front so I think it will be fine.
This is the finished product. I didn't take any in between pictures... maybe because my hands were all dirty trying to get the 7!!! tomato plants planted, they're in the back. (We thought there was only two but in the two containers one had 4 and one had 3 in them so now we'll have a TON of tomatoes!!!) The two you see up front are a red bell pepper and green bell pepper. These were all already growing and we transplanted them into the garden bed. Then I planted seeds for carrots, green beans, peas, butter lettuce, spinach, and onions. I'm super excited to see how these do!!! Hopefully I'll reap a good harvest out of them! And I planted marigolds all around the edges of the box.
My BIG helper. She's growing up so fast. Nattie loves to use the house or her watering can to water the garden, the tomatoes and the grass, oh and the tree. She walks around with the water on and just waters whatever she feels like. I tell her to make sure she doesn't spray in the open windows!
Such a good girl. If you see the garden in the back you'll see to the right that there's nothing over there. That's where I'm going to put the other box when I get it. Maisy (our dog) learned pretty quick already not to go near the garden. I thought it was going to take more but she's really learned quick.
This is a blossom on the purple tomato plant.
The tomatoes growing on the yellow pear tomato plant! I'll have to take pictures of these when they're done. I've never had them before so this should be interestingly fun.
If you look very closely I noticed today that my Marigolds were already sprouting. These aren't in the garden box but around the edges of it. I'm super excited about them. I kind of goofed though. I planted these all around the box and now have no room to stand to garden. I may have to pull some out and maybe transplant them. I'll do it different next year!
These are the garlic flavored chives... yummy! I just go and get what I want when I want.
So that's one of the projects I've done lately. Hopefully it will turn out well or what doesn't turn out I hope I'll learn from so I can do better next year. I'm loving trying new things out!
Thanks Meemo, Old Grandpa, and Micah for being such big helps... oh and of course thank you to Syssa, Mara, and Nattie!!! They are helpful too!
We have gotten about 8-9 zucchinis out of our garden so far. Lovin' it! If you have a zucchini recipe for me I'd love to have it! We also got 5 green beans out of the garden yesterday. A little prematurely picked but I was just so excited about them I couldn't help myself. I think something is eating the buds off my tomato plants and I'm not sure what to do about it. It's either that or the sun scorches them and then they fall off. Hopefully I can figure it out and get them to produce fruit.
One of the green beans on the vine.
The garden. This just doesn't do the garden justice. I will have to take a picture tomorrow and post it. It's grown so much!
I think this was our first zuchinni we picked. It grew up against the edge of our garden box so I had to pick it.
All of these tomatoes have ripened and have been eaten now. They are yellow pear tomatoes (although according to Nattie they are orange) and they are like cherry tomatoes. They are quite good!
We accidentally picked a really small zucchini trying to pick a bigger one. Here is Nattie modeling the vegetables.
The green beans... these have been my favorite because I can SEE them growing the best!
