STRAWBERRY!

Thanks to yaquigrande and vrtlaricaana for following my blog!

I still need to take some updated pictures, but this is some exciting news to share. My first strawberry!!

Here is a picture of the garden after I cleaned up some of the maple seeds. There is a pretty definitive line where I wore out. It rained again last night, so I'm sure I'll have more to clean up, but by the looks of it, the trees are almost finished.

My in-laws come in from PA this weekend, so I've got to get a lot done before that can happen! I'd like to have the tomatoes in the ground, but I still need to go buy some stakes of some sort. We also need to add the four or five bags of used coffee grounds to the compost pile that have slowly accumulated on the patio. Here's to getting some work done!

Harvest Monday

Yay! I have more radishes! I've picked more since I took this picture. I need to do a full update soon. I went to PA for a wedding this weekend, and it rained the whole time I was gone. I can't even believe the amount of growth my lettuce, peas, and broccoli went through while I was gone!
Here are just a few more things I came home to from the weekend. I took this for the picture of the broccoli, but this just shows you the project I'll be tackling now. I'm going to try to go pick up all of the helicopter seeds that have completely littered my garden.

I also found an egg shell on the porch, and this is what I found when I took the picture of the nest!

Join in on the Harvest fun over at Daphne's Dandelions!

In the Garden

Thanks Gretchen for following my blog!

Just a few updates. I was looking back through some pictures so far, and can't believe how quickly things grow. My peas have grown between 5 and 10 inches in the past 9 days, depending on the plant!

My broccoli seems to have finally recovered from the sunburn I allowed early on. The same plants that I put into my friends' gardens look way better than mine since they were not transplanted and sun burnt all at the same time. You live and learn. I still think they'll do alright.

My lettuce seems to finally have shown some growth! This picture is a bit misleading, because there are two plants right next to each other that I haven't thinned out yet, but even still, the growth is there!

If you can tell the weeds from the yellowed baby spinach seedlings, you'll see they haven't grown in at least a month. I'm pulling them today. I think I'll attempt spinach in only one of the blocks again. I'll do cilantro in the other one. I don't want to waste precious real estate on the spinach if they aren't going to produce. My friend's garden that I helped her plant already has several leaves on her spinach and hers were planted after mine. Not sure what I did wrong.

We've got a bird's nest on our front porch that we found the past week. I'm thrilled, though my husband not so much. I'm a big fan of robins; he doesn't want poop on the porch. Here is another perk to having a 6'6" 19 year old living in my house... :) I got this picture!

My very first Harvest Monday

Here it is! A tad premature, but I ate it anyway! I left the other ones in the ground. Hopefully in the next couple of days they'll be ready!

Strawberry Blossom!

**MrsS Thanks for following my blog!

Not a ton to say today.

I have my first strawberry blossom though!! Still back and forth on whether or not to pick it. I don't think the delayed gratification thing is going to fly with my strawberries, we'll see.

My peppers that desperately needed potting up were all potted up today. For some reason the seeds in the bottom right didn't do so hot. They are the same as the ones in the back, but a different section from my Jiffy peat pellets, strange. All of these were planted the same day.

And, when I potted up the last of my tomatoes the other day, I also had to do the job of thinning them. I had never gotten around to it. I'm not a very good "seed saver" in that I don't do any special storing (they get stuck in a plastic bag and thrown into a cabinet) so I double planted all of my tomatoes and my peppers. I waited so long to pot them up, that I had full blown plants growing out of a peat pellet. I decided to try to see if some would root, and sure enough 3 Big Boy, and 4 Roma plants were saved since they sent out roots. Those were potted up today too. The end.

Looks pretty cool if you ask me!

Compost Competition!

Among other gardening things done today, (water, weeding, feeding, etc) when I got home from my nanny gig, my husband and I went out to look at the compost pile. He was commenting on how hot it was when he got home, so I went over to check it myself. I told him we could check it with our meat thermometer, and he said do you want to take a picture of it and put it on your blog? I immediately said that EG does that sometimes. He looked at me kind of funny and said 'EG'? He said that it was funny that I said it so nonchalantly, as if he knew who I was talking about. In reality, he would have known exactly who I was talking about if I would have said "Engineered Garden Guy" which is the nickname I've used this past year and a half when talking to my husband when referring to EG's blog. That I slipped and used the common blogger nickname made the situation funny. ANYWAY, I ran into the house and got the thermometer, and checked the part of the pile we were looking at, and it sat right at 134 degrees Fahrenheit. My husband was pretty impressed, as was I, since we had never actually checked how hot it was getting. I then said, "EG's sometimes gets his compost pile up in the 150's-160's range" and my husband said, "Oh yeah? I'll find 150!" This time he made ME laugh. So there's the compost competition. Here it is: Just under 150 degrees. Kind of hard to see.

My husband said he'd probably find hotter, and that we just needed a longer thermometer. He's normally not the competitive type, but that just made me smile!

SUNday!

Thanks for following my blog Jeni!

Beautiful weather continues! Highs in the low-mid 80s for the next five days, along with several days with the lows in the 60s! Can't beat that, although I think my lettuce/spinach is suffering because of the heat. It hasn't really done ANYTHING for a good two weeks now!

I FINALLY potted up all of the rest of my tomatoes. I don't get the newspaper, so I was using ads that we got in the mail, and any newspaper I could bum from a friend. I made the pots on Thursday, and finally finished potting them all up last evening. I was pretty whiny by the end of it. That's what I get for way over planting. I figure I can sell the ones I'm not giving to my friends, and maybe make a few bucks for next year's garden. I think all in all I have 93 tomato plants. I was asked in a comment which varieties so I'll put that here too... I'm growing Big Boy, Brandywine, Caspian Pink, Delicious, Green Zebra, Jubilee Yellow, Margherita Hybrid, Pineapple, Roma, Striped Paste, Super Beefsteak, Sweet 100, and Sweet Million.

Here is a picture of my right side radishes, first and second sowing.

I planted a mesclun mix in this area last year, and this has volunteered itself. I thought these were so interesting last year, but I never had the heart to harvest them, and I was a little nervous to eat them anyway!

My peas are still doing well! I showed my husband this picture, and he said that the picture I took make them look like giants even though they are all of 7 inches tall. He doesn't think they are this impressive. I like them anyway.

Our yard is loaded with ivy once you pass the tree, and so right now our backyard is loaded with these little purple flowers. I would much rather have grass throughout, but these little purple guys are tolerable! As are the few dandelions, I know they are weeds, but they can be pretty in their own way! (Just don't get in my garden!)

My husband and I spent Friday's Date Night at Home Depot searching for plants to do some sort of landscaping in our front yard which is completely bare. I felt sort of overwhelmed because I really would have liked to have a plan drawn out and ready before we went shopping. This is what we came up with so far. I didn't want to overbuy without a clearer picture of what we were going to do.

Today is my little sister's 22 birthday! She doesn't read this blog, but Happy Birthday to her anyway! Lastly, this is Solomon working on a tomato for breakfast!