Going Pretty Good

Everything seems to have taken off and is now running except the poor yellow squash not sure what's going on there but it needs replacing. The eggplant I do believe has maybe stalled out due to the zucchini leaf covering it, gotta get to work training those things.


The beans seem a lot fuller earlier this year and the strawberries are producing.


The early girl tomatoes are probably all going to finally come ripe at the same time but luckily I'm prepared with a recipe for tuna bites to use them all.


Here's that poor little squash and eggplant and the mother of zucchinis.


The green onions are about to get whacked for some scallion pancakes to go with a chinese dinner this weekend and the jalapeno is waiting for some heat to kick it into gear, the carrots are going much faster this year dunno what's different.


The lettuce is ready to become wraps for chicken at that chinese dinner and the cilantro is trying it's best to squeeze in beside it, I've got to find some instructions for drying out or freezing the oregano since I don't think it'll like the coming heat too well.

This year is already looking better than last, with all the coolness and weird rain we've been having the watering schedule is a mess but it doesn't seem to be bothering the plants.

The hummingbirds haven't decided if they are here to stay yet and only seem to show up around dusk but they've been loving the honeysuckle that's in full bloom.

Continued Already in Progress

So I pretty much quit updating the blogs last summer when things started getting a little hectic around here, but we did keep up the garden. The final harvests probably could have been better especially if we'd known what we were doing to begin with. This year the garden is pretty much all my doing, mom has had some health problems that make standing and bending for any amount of time difficult so it's all up to me now. Hopefully she'll be in better condition by the time the bugs really start to invade in mid summer (I just cannot deal with the spiky caterpillars just, no.)

Before we started this year I made a plan of what to keep and what to get rid of and what I was going to plant. Luckily Dad already had a plan to raise the boxes even higher than the just off the ground we had last year.
So now the tops of the boxes sit just about waist height for me and mom being under 5'4" as we are, so much easier on the lower back and upper legs just from the couple weeks I've been working in them.

Believe me when I say if you are going to do raised boxes, go higher earlier!! like before you ever put anything in them, these boxes must have weighed in at about 150-200 lbs full of soil like they were, not easy on the back at all to lift from the ground.

The beans and strawberries box got moved a little more west to get good sun across the whole box and the lettuce and herb box was moved to the other end of the patio to take better advantage of the early morning light.

We kept the lackluster strawberries that had wintered over, I'm hoping this year they'll truly produce, the early girl tomato was also saved since it was putting out a few tomatoes a month all winter. Also the beautiful bunch of parsley and the oregano that finally decided to show up have been saved.


So this years plan is for lettuce cilantro and chives added to the parsley and oregano box, a new cherry tomato and another mid size tomato called Celebrity, jalapeno and poblano replacing the bell pepper from last year (we have ziplocks full of frozen bell for this year) carrots and green onions which always do great.

Instead of trying the hanging deal again I have the yellow squash, zucchini and eggplant all in one box together and will start earlier on training the vines up. I also added another dozen strawberries to the dozen or so we had left from last year and replanted the kentucky wonder pole beans.

Hopefully more pictures to come!