Gardening...Year Two

...garden adventures...

This year we decided to stack our boxes 

to give the plants some leg room.  

They LOVED it and grew big and happy.

(you can read about last year's garden here) 

may 22, 2013

june....growing like crazy

july

august

Our first cucumber was BITTER! 

It was really sad.

But, we have picked probably a dozen since then

(I only planted two plants!) 

and none of those have been bitter. 

We LOVE cucumbers and we are glad this year's harvest

is making up for last year.  

Next year I am going to try to make pickles.

The cherry and yellow pear tomatoes 

were the first ones to ripen at the beginning of July.

The Romas and Early Girls have been producing

like crazy the past three weeks! 

They like the drip system Nate installed.

One night for dinner my friend Elisha and I had tomatoes and

basil from the garden with some freshly made mozzarella from 

Harmons.  Drizzle that with some balsamic and

I'm in heaven!

(I also want to try making my own mozzarella...)

This is what I was picking every few days:

Now we have more reds ripening than yellow.

I planted a Citronella plant in a pot to help keep mosquitoes

away and it bloomed! Such a pretty little flower.

We have one green pepper.

I planted the pepper plant next to the tomatoes

and the tomatoes have gotten so large that 

the pepper doesn't get as much sun as it needs. 

Next year I want to plant a few peppers out of the boxes and over 

by the cucumbers.

This is where the strawberries, beans, and cucumbers live.

Our strawberry plants have expanded and stretched out farther and farther.
We have had about a dozen so far....
they are small and sweet and Mabel loves them.

STRING BEANS!

The two little plants that survived.

(Nate accidentally dug up all the seeds that I planted

when he was burying the sprinkler pipe!)

These were the only things I planted as seeds.

Mabel really enjoyed the seed planting experience...

we will be doing that again next year.

They are so tasty:

It has been so fun watching Mabel enjoy the garden this year.

She has gotten really good at only picking the tomatoes that are ripe

and we pretty much eat tomatoes at breakfast, lunch, and dinner...

or anytime she wanders out to get some.

She likes to help me weed...which means she scoops dirt with her little

spade and dumps it in the chicken coop.

She has been my little helper picking tomatoes to pass out to 

our friends and neighbors.