Garden 2010 - Six Weeks Later

Six weeks into our growing season we have some positive results and some not so positive ones.

On the positive side of things we have already been able to eat some beans, peas, cilantro, basil, and romaine.  It is still early for the Romaine, but we have used some leaves to make sandwiches and burgers even better.  Super Yum!

Our tomato plants have a few little green tomatoes growing on them, even though the plants are quite sad looking (yellow in some spots).  It looks like we will get tomatoes regardless.

Sad tomato plants...

...but happy tomatoes!

The carrots, zucchini, peppers, and spinach all seem to coming along nicely, though something ate one of the spinach plants.  If it was a rabbit, hopefully it was a really cute rabbit.

On the negative side of things, we started about 25 new seeds in our peat pellets, but for whatever reason none of them sprouted.  We started a few more after that, and only a few bean, corn, and cucumber sprouts were able to be planted.  Once the cucumbers were planted, they instantly died.  For us, this was definitely not the year to grow cucumbers!

On the advice of my Green Thumb friend Tasha, I checked out the blog You Grow Girl.  We were looking for a home made pesticide, and found a tip on the site to use Neem Oil.  We found Neem Oil at the health food store and made our own pesticide.

Since spraying the plants, we have definitely noticed less bugs trying to get at our plants.  The website has countless other great tips, so if you have any questions about your garden, You Grow Girl is a great place to look for answers!

Previous Garden 2010 Blog Posts:

Plants in the Ground, Plants in the Ground
Garden 2010 - Day 12
How Does Your Garden Grow

Garden 2010 - Day 12

With almost two weeks in the ground, some of our vegetables are thriving and some have died.

Here is the body count:

Cucumber: all 3 died

Beans: 2 of 12 died

Peas: 1 of 5 died

Onions: 1 of 4 died

Corn: 2 of 10 died

Spinach: 3 of 10 died

Everything else seems to be growing all right.

Basil is getting really strong!

 

Romaine and spinach are really coming along!

We got our peppers planted.

Our zucchinis already have flowers!

Early last week we thought many of the plants weren't going to make it, so we added more seeds to our greenhouse and started some new sprouts growing.

We started more romaine (6), oregano (2), dill (2), cucumber (3), and zucchini (3).  The cucumbers are already sprouting, so hopefully we can get some going again early in June.  Hopefully this round of cucumbers wants to live!!  :)

Plants in the Ground, Plants in the Ground

With the weather looking great for at least the next week, we took the plunge and planted our vegetables and herbs on Sunday.  Upon planting them, we realized that we started our sprouts far too early, as many of them grew very tall in their Jiffy Pots.  At least four of our bean plants had grown beans on them!  Crazy!  We will know better for next year to start them a lot closer to planting day.

The Garden - 2010

As some of the sprouts were very tall, we had to use steaks to hold them up until their roots grow strong enough to hold them up on their own.  Hopefully the roots take hold soon and all of our plants make it.  We already lost some of our sprouts prior to planting day, as the dill, a few carrots, a spinach, and a romaine sprout died.  I think they were probably mad about being in the Jiffy Pots so long.  Sorry sprouts. :(

Here are some photos of what made it into the garden this year:

Basil (2), Oregano (2), Cilantro (2)

 Green Beans (12)

 Peas (5), Carrots (5), Onions (4)

Romaine (4)

Spinach (10) - we like spinach!

Tomatoes (3)

From back: Corn (10), Zucchini (3), Cucumber (3)

We left room in the garden for some pepper plants that aren’t yet big enough to transplant.  Pretty soon we’ll have red, green, jalapeno, and mini-bell peppers!  So excited!

Pepper Sprouts

I am very happy that we were finally able to plant.  I hope the weather stays nice and all our little veggies take root!  Some of them were looking a little weary out there today - but we'll have to see how they are in a few days.  Hopefully they all grow really big so there are lots of yummy veggies to eat throughout the summer!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

For the past two summers we have grown our garden from already sprouted plants.  For some reason I thought it was too hard to grow vegetables from seed, so I would pick out the already started veggies that someone else grew (magically, I thought) from the store and plant them.  We would spend upwards of $70 on these pre-started plants, so this year we decided to see if we could grow our vegetables from seeds.

Our collection of seeds - veggies and herbs

Part of the motivation to grow from seeds came from our discovery of Jiffy Pots and Jiffy Greenhouses.  The greenhouses have 6 peat pellets in them where we planted our seeds in order to get them started.  Once the sprouts outgrew the greenhouse, we transplanted them into the Jiffy Pots, which are biodigradable pots that you can plant directly into the ground.  On planting day, no transplanting will be necessary, we can just bury each pot!  That sounds easy enough!

Greenhouse, Jiffy Pots, and peat pellets

This may sound really lame to say, but I am really fascinated that a seed can grow into a plant.  I took grade eleven biology so I know scientifically how and why it works, but watching them actually do it has been blowing my mind.  Just mix water, dirt, a seed, and some sun, and presto - you have a plant.  It has been a neat show to watch over the past few weeks.

 Bean Seed

 Bean spout in peat pellet, grown in the greenhouse

 Transplanted to Jiffy Pot

 Look at it grow!

 It is already getting big and is ready to be planted

So far my Jiffy Pot growing experience has been great.  Only four of the seeds we planted didn't sprout, and we planted well over 80 seeds, so I think those are amazing results!  Plus, even with the supplies we bought (greenhouses, extra peat pellets, all the seeds, potting soil), we have only spent about $40 this year on our garden.  We've spent a little over half as much as last year and we probably have five times as many plants.  Not only is growing from seed fun to watch, it also saves us money.  I love that.

Our current sprout collection

Our sprouts are ready to go into the ground and I am really eager to get them there.  We were going to plant our garden last week, but the weather forcast said it would be cold on the weekend - and it sure was - we got snow up here!  The weather is supposed to be warming up by the end of the week and hopefully we can get our vegetables planted then.  I have a feeling this summer is going to be great for gardening, and I can't wait to see what comes up!