Gardening Update

We have a gardening update!  The plants are growing tall!  It took a couple of weeks of watering and sunlight and time and germination.  I have no idea what germination is, but it sounds like I know what I'm talking about.  The top picture is a photo of the plants I, myself have planted.  The plants to the right are my neighbor's plants.  They have a little bit more than I do.

This is my green bell pepper plant.  It doesn't look like it's grown that much, but if you go back to my other gardening posts, you'll see the comparison.  If any of my readers are gardeners or know about pepper plants, there are tiny little peppers growing on the ends of the leaves.  Can't wait until they are enormous and delicious.

Here we have one of my tomato plants.  I think judging by the elongated tomato that is growing, they are the Roma tomatoes.  I can't read the label that is buried underneath, but I will no doubt be using them when they come up.  Underneath all those leaves there are, I think, close to 8 more tomatoes getting ready to bud.  Just from one plant! 

This is another one of my tomato plants.  These look to be the heirloom tomatoes.  It's really exciting being able to see the fruits of your labor come out of the ground.  I cannot wait until I see these ripe tomatoes grow big and be made into a sauce or salsa.

I completely forget what this plant is.  I think it's the zucchini plant.  I know a bought a zucchini plant and this plant does stand out against the basil, tomatoes, peppers, and herbs I've planted.  I'm calling it.  This is a zucchini plant.  

More tomatoes blooming!  Little tiny tomatoes that I cannot wait to taste.

This tomato is actually very big.  I'm just awaiting the days until they turn red.  I've also never had green tomatoes.  I know people talk about fried green tomatoes, and usually they go into an orgasmic state of how good they are.  I just like to wait a little longer and make them ripe red tomatoes.

Fourth and final tomato plant.  These ones are also coming in very well.  I wasn't able to count them accurately but I do know that in total, I counted about 22+ tomatoes.  Not bad for whatever I paid for the plants at Home Depot.

This is the lettuce plant that I started when I bought a head of Romaine lettuce and put the growing  end in the ground.  I saw the idea online on a pinterest-like website.  If I remember correctly, I think it's called dump-a-day.  

This final picture is a the entirety of the garden.  However, when I went out to check the garden and take these pictures, I found a little rabbit sneaking around my garden.  So now, I have to go back to Home Depot or Ace Hardware and get some wire fencing to keep out critters like him.  And then maybe figure out the next step on keeping out birds, making sure my plants don't fall over from the wind (real thing), and then figuring out how and when to pick out my herbs and plants.

Planting your Garden...

So me and my neighbors have started planting our gardens.  We set our rows and planted our vegetables.  Being a first time gardener, I just picked up four tomato plants, a green bell pepper plant, a plant of basil, a zucchini plant, and then I started some seeds of Cilantro, Basil, and Mint.

 I started those in pots out back on my porch.  One of the pots I used is a former windshield washer fluid container that I emptied out.  Trust me, I know how clever that seems.  Let's hope that something actually happens and I didn't just ruin a bunch of soil.  I did dump some of the water out from the plastic container since it was a bit overwhelming with water from the night before's rain.  The green pot is Mint and the Yellow pot is Cilantro.

Up close are some of the tomato plants, basil, zucchini, cucumbers, peppers and other things that we planted.  We put down landscaping tarp so that weeds won't get through.  It helps.  But alas, we've been keeping it in the ground with metal spokes, but we've run out and had to use rocks and dirt instead.  

This is the final row that I've done as of today.  It's mostly peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, and I think the last plant at the end is either blueberries or something else.  There are also beans somewhere, but I don't know.  We haven't done a good job of making sure what's what.  We're just planting.   The tomato plant in the foreground does have a pot in it, but it will dissolve.  Which helps with the process.

This is the first row of the opposite side of the garden.  We have flowers, tomatoes, lettuce, peppers, and just a lot of other things that aren't really mine.  My neighbors are really loving this and I'm just getting used to being a first timer and paying attention to certain things.  

Looking down from above, you can see how we laid out the plants and lined them up.  I initially didn't have any plants, so I went to Home Depot and got some.  The plants (starting on the left go as follows): some flowers that my neighbor's girlfriend planted, tomato plants, bell peppers and raspberries are around the metal pole, then lettuce, then cucumbers, squash, some zucchini, blueberries, habanero peppers, strawberries, then my tomato plants, some basil, more peppers, zucchini, and more cucumbers.  Should make for an awesome harvest.  

My neighbor bought the things that surround the plants to grow tall.  I forget what they are called, but I'm just used to putting a stick in the ground next to plants so that they grow alongside the stick instead of falling over when they get hit by wind.  

Some things that we need to do for the future is put up some posts and chicken wire, to keep animals out.  Consistently water and upkeep the garden, and just let mother nature do the rest of the work.  I don't know too much about weather and what we need to worry about, but we get plenty of sunlight in this area.  

Also, now that I'm finding myself more and more useful around the house with other things, I need to find things to do with empty bottles and containers.  I have an empty Hot Sauce bottle, and I just can't seem to find anything to do with it other than put homemade hot sauce in it.  That'll be one of my next projects.