Time Travel: Sun Flowers

Time Travel: Life got a bit away from me this summer. I have been working on finishing up school, and with the addition of my lovely almost full time job, I haven't much time for anything else. Posts with the Time Travel disclosure were posted well after I intended to post them. Sorry!

I planted so many sun flower seeds, and only two plants really grew, but boy did they! I also harvested the seeds from the larger blossom, so I should have more next year!

Time Travel: Final Garden Spoils

Time Travel: Life got a bit away from me this summer. I have been working on finishing up school, and with the addition of my lovely almost full time job, I haven't much time for anything else. Posts with the Time Travel disclosure were posted well after I intended to post them. Sorry!

Today, I pulled all of the carrots out of the garden. I had no idea I had so many growing! I know they look small, but a friend had convinced me the soil around here wasn't great for carrots, so I expected them to be even smaller!

I juiced up the carrots from my garden, and some store bought veggies to juice up.

These are store bought carrots because I wasn't sure what my yield would be. 

This little fellow is the most knarled sad looking carrot. I didn

Time Travel: Garden Overgrown

Time Travel: Life got a bit away from me this summer. I have been working on finishing up school, and with the addition of my lovely almost full time job, I haven't much time for anything else. Posts with the Time Travel disclosure were posted well after I intended to post them. Sorry!

This summer, I managed to keep my garden watered, but not much else. The lettuce quickly took over, and made my little plot look like a wild weed patch.

I spent some time and pulled it all up. It would have been nice to get more salads out of it (though we certainly ate plenty of salads), but once it flowers, it starts to taste bitter.

Itty Bitty Tomato

This little guy is the first tomato from my garden. I'm excited to make pasta sauce, but alas, I'll have to wait for his friends!

Garden Spoils!

Well, there was enough lettuce growth that I felt comfortable taking some for dinner tonight. Some leaves showed some bite marks, but that is the cost of organic growing, hmm? All in all, it was exciting to eat what I'd grown, and boy was it delicious!

Rain Barrel

My friend Jenny helped me make a rain barrel. If you'd like to make one yourself, you can find directions here: http://www.cityofbremerton.com/content/sw_makeyourownrainbarrel.html.

I don't yet have it connected to the downspout you can see in the corner, as the roof is being painted this week, but after a few good rains, I intend to get everything fully functional. As it is, I can fill the barrel with a bucket, and water my garden with a hose. Which sounds like a pain, but it isn't as bad as watering the garden with the bucket. 

When I say my friend Jenny helped me, I mean that she helped me, and gave me bits of her house so I had to buy less at Lowes (In addition to knowing how to put it together, and wandering through Lowes with me making terrible innuendoes . Which is how I have part of a window screen attached here at the top. Also, you can see that I zip tied my hose rack on there. 

Update on the Garden!

This stuff is the secret to my very modest success. I used my food processor to chop up some pablano peppers and let them steep in water overnight, then strained the water into an old spray bottle. I added a little bit of oil too, as I'd heard there were some bugs that didn't like that. I take it out with me every few days and spray down my plants. I know it makes a difference, because when I forgot to spray some plants I put on the other side of the house for a few days, they were eaten alive!

 The rest of this post is really just pictures.

Lettuce! This is the best growing patch.

This is what a strawberry looks like when you have thieving squirrel neighbors.

The plant in the middle is a broccoli (I think)

This was the smallest of my tomato plants that barely made it to the first rung when I planted it.

Lettuce and carrots!

This tomato has also grown tremendously.

baby tomato!

Not so baby tomatoes, though still too green to eat.

The tall sprout there is a Sunflower from a very amazing and lovely friend.

Surprise Strawberries

I may not be any good at gardening. I don't know, it's really too soon to tell.

For starters though, I planted my tomatoes in mid-late April. The last frost is May 10th, so I might have to tuck my 'maters in with widdle blankets. They already have some frost damage, but I think they are okay so far. There's that.

My lettuce (or maybe carrots, not sure) is starting to sprout- which is exciting. However, if the weather gets cold overnight, I may be less happy about this. As long as they were in seeds, they were okay.

BUT. Here's the awesome part. Strawberries grew on their own! I mean, I'm sure upstairs dude planted them last year, and they just came back- but I probably wouldn't have tried to grow strawberries and they are doing the best out of all the plants so far. I have three plants in the garden, and there are several in the yard too. Exciting!

Garden!

I started a garden! I'm really excited about it, and I've enjoyed variably telling Jer that I want to go play in the dirt/cow poop and watching him shake his head because he knows what a germaphobe I am. Guys, I'm seriously a huge GERMAPHOBE. Capital letters totally a must. 

Anyway, Here's my garden as it looked this morning when I was done with it. I purchased tomato plants that someone else had started inside because I did not, and relocated a few strawberry plants that grew on their own from upstairs neighbor dude's garden last year. He moved out, I poached the plot.

I also planted broccoli, butternut squash, lettuce (3 kinds!), and carrots (3 kinds!). Did I mention I'm really excited? I'm really excited! The wood is for me to stand on, because it bothered me that I kept compacting the soil when I stepped in, so now I have something to stand on.

Also: I have no idea what I am doing.