I'm Back

I have no good excuses for my absence.  November was beyond busy and then I seemed to play catch up most of this month. 

Pictured here are the lettuce and tomato I picked from the garden/greenhouse last week.  BLTs in December with homegrown tomato is a real treat.  I even bought pork bacon (a rare treat) to go with them.  I figured a fresh tomato deserved it.  I think it was better than any July BLT.  I hope you will come back tomorrow for a tour of the garden and greenhouse.

Spring Garden

This is the largest of the garden spots. It has corn, potatoes, peas, squash, cucumbers, cantaloupe, and all of the extra tomato and pepper plants.

This is the watermelon patch at the back part of the yard. I had just finished weeding this part of it so everything looks nice and neat.

Here are my new raised beds. This first one has gourds, pumpkins, and Indian corn.

The second raised bed has lettuce shown here.

It also contains the herbs. The catnip is covered with a cage to keep the cats from completely destroying it. I move it around so they have access but never leave it uncovered for very long.

The last raised bed has tomatoes, tomatillos, and peppers.

I also grow tomatoes, tomatillos, and peppers in five-gallon buckets. This is my preferred way of growing them so I can keep them watered and fertilized well.

This is the last garden spot. It has onions, okra, squash, zucchini, cucumbers, and cantaloupes.

We should be eating fresh cucumbers by the weekend!

Spring Flowers

Moss Rose

Lime Zinnia

Sweet Potato Vine


I am not exactly sure what this is. The leaves of the plant remind me of lamb's ear, but the flowers are not the same.

My first Cosmos flower of the season.

Fruit Trees in the Garden

A little update on how the fruit is growing. The peaches are holding on. A few seemed to have escaped the bugs and are unblemished.

The fig tree has put on quite a few figs. They are delicious fresh. I prefer to eat them off the tree. They make yummy jam as well.

The pears are slowly growing. I am hoping to have enough for some pear preserves or pear honey. I would really like to put up some pear halves as well.

Staking Tomatoes for Less

My container tomato plants are staked with tomato cages. When we were gifted a bunch of tomato plants for the garden, I knew I would not want to buy that many tomato cages. My budget simply would not allow it. The tomatoes still needed to be staked. We used old tobacco sticks, heavy duty twine and twist ties.

First dh buried the tobacco sticks and strung the twine making two to three rows up the sticks.

Next we gently pulled up the plants and used twist ties to loosely secure the stalks to the twine. The stalks will continue to grow so no matter what you use to secure them keep it loose.

Main Garden

Many of my plants are in containers, but I do have a main garden in the backyard. Here are some pictures of what I grow there and how everything is doing.

The first row is a mixture of watermelon and cantaloupe plants. The watermelons are just vines, but we do have several small cantaloupes.

The second and third rows are mostly tomato plants with a few zucchini plants. We have several small tomatoes.

The third row is yellow squash. I prefer the straight neck as opposed to the crookneck squash. We have been eating some squash already.

Row number five is cucumbers. I do not need any dill pickles this year. These are for eating fresh and perhaps some yummy sweet pickle relish.

The last row is okra which is in need of a bit of thinning out. The best way I know to eat okra is fried. I can handle it is soup but not stewed. I am thinking some pickled okra might be a good thing to try this year.

Up-to-Date Garden Pictures

Here are the pictures of the garden that I took over the weekend. I have more but am saving them to go with other posts.

Eggplant

Tomato

Butterfly Garden