plant a vegetable garden

Ahhhh…. My garden is beautiful and will get more so as the spring/summer continues. The bok choy did well, but was very bitter so… I won’t do that again, until I read up on it more.

The strawberries are coming in good! I have a small green chili developing as well as a very beautiful eggplant that is almost 5 inches!! I have eaten beats and spinach! I have green and yellow squash, water melon, jalapinos, tomatoes, bell peppers, sunflowers, rosemary, chives and leeks growing as well.

I think this will have to be my summer spot and the winter one I will have to try somewhere else.

Exciting!

Is bok choy supposed to have flowers on the top of it? I dont see the thick celery looking stalks just yet either.

Who knew how hard it would be to get food to grow!! Crazy!! So when I planted the ‘good stuff’ spinach and all that…. the STUPID area that had SO MUCH SUN in the summer that I couldn’t get things to grow had absolutely NO SUN in the winter!! It is just now starting to get sun on the north side of the garden area and some bok choy is starting to come up (after all this time) so I replanted everything. So frustrating!!

Most of my salsa garden died in the freeze we had. Humph! I am reading and re-reading Garden Guy- he is a local here and knows our climate, so….. on we go for another try!

I am excited to have actually planted something! The pumpkins were too early for Halloween earlier this year, they did not have enough shade in this AZ sun and I planted the corn too late to produce and to shade the pumpkins. So I have learned something about that. I have a different area, with more shade in which to begin again in the spring.

Right now tho I have planted leeks, beets, bok choy and spinach! I am sooo excited. I have also transplanted a salsa garden into pots, jalapeno’s, green chili’s, tomatoes, green onions and cilantro! We will see how well they do this winter. I think normally those things are summer time growers but we will see.

I had to hoe the grass out opf the garden, but now you can see the plants again. The ‘pumpkin patch’ is coming along nicely. I found out that I planted too early for Halloween, so I may have to do this again. Practice run! The corn (for shading them) is getting a bit taller now. Almost two feet. Same with the sunflowers.

I have found a new spot! It is another small area 10×11. But enough to get me started. I am planning on a winter garden and am going to get more brave with planting things. Pole beans and then marigolds to keep the bugs away from then. They like to be planted with tomatoes, but I will be hanging those, so they won’t take up ground room. Also brocolli and eggplant and rosemary. I think they all like to grow together, I will have to re-read to make sure. One thing about a winter garden… I won’t have to worry about the grass!!! Sheesh!

Now to get the fence up by July.

The pumpkins are coming along nicely! I have planted a little corn to help shade them from the summer heat and put in a few sunflowers for fun. So far…. so good!!! Im so excited! The fam is helping keep an eye on them and water them! I have finally found another perfect spot for my next little garden! AND I have started a compost pile!! I keep hearing of this liquid gold, so… I figure in a few months when I ready to plant the other garden, just maybe that will be ready too!

We dug up the garden area. Closed off the hole in the fencing (red-neck style) to keep the dogs out. And WaLa! Planted pumpkins. I chose pumpkins because I want to perfect growning them. When the grand kids get a tiny bit older (well three of them anyway- two already are. Ive been slacking on this for awhile) I want them to be able to come to ‘grandma’s pumpkin patch’ and pick their own pumpkin!!

If it doesn’t work this year, I will do it again and again until I get it right.

I still want to find another place for a cutesie little garden for other things that I love to eat, but for now… it is started!

Well, this isn’t going so well for me. I just haven’t made the time!!

Ive got the fencing up. It is actually a ‘dog run’ but I am going to use it to keep the dogs out. Unfortunately they have somehow made a hole to get thru this chainlink fencing, so I have to fix it.

I did buy a mini roto tiller, the ground here is like concrete, but with the rain we’ve had lately- if I get out there SOON it might not be sooo bad.

Ive also decided that I am going to only plant pumpkins. I want to practice this so that the grand kids can come to ‘grandma’s pumpkin patch’ to get a pumpkin for halloween. In the future they can help me plant them and tend to them and then pick their own. Just something fun that I want to do.

I will have to devise a different plan if I want to plant more than that. The dogs get into everything!! diggers and chewers @#$%!!!

So, lets see if I can get the fence fixed and the groud tilled by the end of this weekend…. baha

I had a garden once a LONG time ago. The first time I planted anything at all NOTHING came up. The second season things came up and nothing produces. The third season, third times a charm…. things came up and most of it actually produced.

My grandparents were alive at the time and I lived next door to them. My grandfather was retired and an avid gardener and gave me pointers and helped.

Now years and years later I am in my own house. My dirt is like cement, white and hard as a rock. If I got past this…. Now that I have grass in my backyard (for probably the first time EVER in the 11 years that I have lived here) that is growing in placed I thought impossible, I would have to try and kill the grass- somehow in a green sort of way).

THEN…. if I actually got that far, how would I keep the dogs out of it??? I dream of building a cute little white picket fence with a cute arch and a cute little swinging gate. Sounds cute, doesn’t it??

I have no skill and wouldn’t even begin to know how to do this. All the tools and the knowledge to use them, all the hardware and to know where it all should be placed, the fencing and types of fencing and putting it all together. WoW! Here comes the fetal position, again.

I thought if I actually had a garden in the winter then I might not have to worry about the grass…. that is as far as my thought process goes with that. On a poor persons budget, how would I make the concrete (ie the ground) richer?? The dogs eat any type of homemade compost material that I might put in a pile. I thought about sand and then rototilling it, but to get a rototiller…..

I wonder just how far I will actually get on this goal….. EVER?!!