My Growing Garden

So last week I was pathetically sick and couldn't tend to the gardens. This made me nervous, but we got some kick butt rain. Yesterday I went out back to assess the damage and everything is doing great!! One of my tomato plants has tripled in size! Nine out of ten of the cucumber seeds I planted took. All my carrots are popping up. And my basil and cilantro that I thought was done for has started coming back with new growth. Plants are so cool.

I'm very excited! This might actually be a productive garden. I was having honest doubts that everything would just shrivel up and die. I'm not expecting a plethora of veggies, but things are looking good so far.

Here are some side by side comparisons.

I planted these tomato plants on April 8th. I got them from a cute nursery in Elgin called Bloomers. I'm not sure if you can tell, but in the upper left empty space I planted a small row of carrot seeds and also in the lower right hand empty space. I've heard carrots are really easy to grow so their a good confidence plant for me, which is why I planted two packs worth between my three garden beds.

Here is the same box on April 19th. Lots of progress huh!! Check out the one tomato plant in the lower left hand corner. That is the one that I said was three times as big as it was 11 days ago. WOOT! Also notice in the upper left hand corner a small row of what looks like grass. That is the carrot seeds taking off. They are also off to a good start in the lower right hand corner. Yep. I'm good. It just makes me giddy, to look at them.

I know this isn't the best picture because I took it in the morning while there is still shade. On the left side I planted four bell pepper plants. About six inches to the right of them I plants another row of carrots. Then to the left of them I planted two rows of cucumber plants, five seeds in each row.

Here is the same box 11 days later. At first I was a little bummed that the bell peppers weren't taking off like the tomato plants, but then I read online that bell pepper plants are slow to get going. So now I don't feel so bad. But they did grow a bit. You can also see the long row of carrots. I'm going to have to learn how to can with all the carrots we might get out of this. And then to the left of the carrots are the two rows of cucumber plants. Nine out of the ten seeds took. Pretty exciting huh? For Christmas you just might get a jar of homemade pickles from us if things go well.

Now to my bad box. I call it that because it was the first one I planted and obviously didn't fill it enough with soil, so I'm not expecting much from this one. As you can see in the picture all the plants look pretty and green. These were planted on March 25th. Starting in the left corner of the top row we have two bell pepper plants, one sweet pepper and basil. Starting from the left of the bottom row I have a bush of cilantro, two rows of carrots planted, and then another bush of cilantro.

Now you can see things have gone downhill and it hasn't even been a month yet. The basil in the top right corner I thought was dead, but the big rains revitalized it back. There are new green leaves growing on top of the yellow ones. The same goes for the two bushes of cilantro. The carrot seeds seemed to have taken as well. I'm just worried that the soil in the box isn't deep enough for them to mature correctly. Brilliant me didn't till the dirt under it. I like to call this the looser box. But I have definitely learned a lot from this box. All three of them couldn't be perfect. At least not on my first try.

So yeah in a couple of months, come on over and get ya some veggies. :) I can't wait until I get to take Devon and Matthew back there to go pick a cucumber and eat it right there, because there will be no chemicals on my plants, so they can get away with not washing them off.

So what do you think?