Our Garden

Sorry about the non interesting post this time. We haven't been doing anything fun, exciting, spontaneous, fun, over the top, fun! We really are boring people these days.

But on April 22 we planted our first garden, yippee! We planted corn, tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, onions, cucumbers, watermelon, and cantaloupe. Pumpkins will be planted next month. So, growing up my parents had a garden but as kids we must not have participated that much except watering and picking plants. I tell you what, it sure has been a chore keeping up with the weeds and grass. We tilled up a section right next to the lagoon. We had grass planted there from the fall and it was doing okay. But you would have thought we just put up a fence and planted in among the grass. The best grass growing on our whole property, right in the middle of the corn, go figure!! I don't remember all the chore part of keeping the garden from when I was younger, sorry mom and dad, I must not have been that big of a helper. On the other hand, if I was as big a "helper" as Madi is, I can see why I don't have any memories of it. I probably wasn't allowed around the plants, kind of the way I am getting with Madi! When we first planted she would come in to "help" and we spent the whole time "Watch where you are stepping Madi", "Look out, you're stepping on a plant", "Madi, don't step on those hills, there are seeds planted there." Lots of fun. It's a little easier to have her in the garden now because everything is getting big and easier to see. Unless she is trying to water and then half the time we are running away from her trying to spray us. That would be thanks to Daddy who decided to spray us repeatedly one evening and now Madi has to do it every time we water!

The other interesting part about our garden is the number of plants we have. If you know Chris and I am sure I have mentioned this fact before, he does nothing small or in little quantities. Especially if he finds a bargain. I think we were in Valley Center visiting when Chris went to buy the plants. Good thing his parents were with him and his mom could talk him out of buying every tomato plant they had! But he found a deal. The tomato plants were like 33 cents a piece and maybe 50 cents a piece for the pepper plants. Not quite sure on the exact price but we ended up getting all the plants and seeds for our garden for $20. But he ended up with 24 tomato plants, 24 total pepper plants, and three bunches of onion roots. In other words, we are going to have tomato and pepper plants coming out of our ears!! I can only imagine how many plants we would have had if Chris had been shopping alone.

So we are now 43 days into our garden, about half way. I really didn't think we were going to have very good melons but they seem to be doing really well and have grown quite a bit the last couple weeks. The cucumbers look really good and we may have a lot of those also. We planted seeds for green onions and haven't seen any come up, which is okay, I really don't like them. We also planted two rows of onion roots for yellow and red onions and after digging them out of the grass and weeds last night, we found about 16 plants. Not a huge crop but it will do for our first time. The pepper plants are looking awesome. Lots of blooms and they plants are a really good size. All 24 of our tomato plants are getting big and full of blooms. We even found a few small tomatoes on a couple of the plants last night. Sunday we bought cages for them and they look much better in the cages. And our corn is not doing good at all. I don't know what happened, but I planted 24 seeds and we have nine plants growing. The plants in the middle did not come up. But we also have a low spot there and I think the seeds drowned. We had a lot of moisture right after we planted. I really don't expect to get any corn off the plants. I don't think there is enough plants to pollinate each other. But this was our learning year. We are taking notes and already planning for next year.

So, in mid August and early September, when I am getting huge and tired and ready to have this baby, we will have tomatoes out the ying yang. We are planning on canning the majority of them and thank goodness, my parents LOVE to can tomatoes! And I really had a blast canning my pears last summer, so maybe we will do that again this year if we can find the fruit again. (I'm setting myself up for punishment!)


Our Garden!!


Closest is cantaloupe, then watermelon, and cucumbers. (Kind of hard to see)


Onions (can you find them through the weeds?)


Peppers


Tomatoes (Mom and Dad came out last night and brought straw to put down around the plants, hopefully cut down on the amount of weeds.)


And our poor corn. It's like Where's Waldo, Where's the corn, can you see it!!??

Happy Anniversary today to Jason and Tabatha! And Jaxson was one month old on Tuesday, what a doll!

Love, Amy