Green

Thank goodness, it's growing!! Our garden has had a major growth spurt in the last couple weeks. Looking at our last update, we really need to fill you in! It has finally warmed up here (it's actually been 90 degrees or more the last couple days, which is too warm if you ask me!), and the plants love it. It has been just about the right balance of wet and dry too, so lately the garden has been fairly low-maintenance.. except for the fact that the most abundant plants in the garden are probably maple trees. Yep, those hundreds of "helicopters" actually sprouted, and now we're the not-so-very-proud owners of hundreds of maple trees. I took a bunch to my employers, who were very happy to have them to plant in their woods.

Anyway, let the tour begin! First up is lettuces! We have five varieties of lettuce which are ready to be eaten any time we please. We've nibbled a couple leaves but haven't made a significant harvest yet. One of these days we're going to make a huge beautiful mixed salad :)


And then, my favorite, potatoes! These plants are absolutely humongous. They require mounding every so often, and I've done it once but really need to do so again today. Apparently the new potatoes only grow above the potato chunk you planted, so you need to keep enough soil above it to leave room for potatoes to grow. Interesting, huh? I'm growing red potatoes, which are my favorite.


Here I put my foot (with the nails painted Bertone red... hehe) by one of the plants just so you can see how very big the plants are. Granted, I have pretty small feet, but I'm still really impressed with how big and happy these potato plants look!


Our broccoli plants have also started to produce! There are tiny heads of broccoli forming in our plants. These pictures were taken a few days ago, so the head in this image is now about double this size. This is another one I'm really looking forward to eating.


Here is our herb garden! We bought several more plants to fill out this little section, because the oregano and thyme were getting lonely. We added rosemary, parsley, another oregano, sweet basil, and Italian basil (which smells SO good). The strawberries are also thriving!


I have several varieties of flowers planted, and the hardiest are these cosmos. We don't have any blooms yet, but the plants are really big. The other varieties of flowers also look fairly promising.


I just think these plants are so pretty! Below is a picture of our Nasturtiums, which are a kind of edible flower. I have no idea what they look like or taste like, but I guess we'll find out!


Our tomato plants finally perked up! I was so worried that they were going to die because they stopped growing and started turning really dark. But when it finally started warming up last week, the tomatoes took off! I'm excited because we started these from seeds and I guess almost everyone just buys starts because seeds don't always do well. I'm pretty confident at this point that these are going to make it! These are Roma tomatoes, by the way.


The sugar peas that came up are doing well too. I'm holding it up in this picture because we haven't found something for them to climb on yet!! They reeeeally need something though, so we need to figure out what to do in the next few days. I'm thinking I might just rig up something with sticks... because that's free.


This was really exciting- some of our pepper plants bloomed! I hope the other two ended up opening the same or next day so they got pollinated!! There were ants crawling all over the plant... I wonder why. They weren't eating the plant as far as I know.

A lady from our church gave us one more sweet pepper plant and two hot peppers, which I planted after these pictures were taken. Thanks, Cleo :)


Since we live in Ohio we have to grow corn! It's really looking good, although not quite as big as the corn in the fields. I think we're going to make "knee high by the Forth of July," though!


I bought and planted some new green bean seeds (my old ones never sprouted), and they're already coming up! I also planted a few onion sets, one of which has sprouted. We're thinking re-planting a few more things that failed too, like zucchinis and pumpkins.

From a distance the garden still looks pretty bare (except for the potatoes and lettuce, of course), but things are really growing! Maybe in a couple weeks when we see some more progress I'll give you another update. Have a great weekend, everyone!