Garden Update

There is a slight, ever so slight, greenish tinge to my thumbs. The impossible has happened. This garden that I'm STILL digging, is producing plants. It's amazing.

The tomatoes are heirlooms but I don't know what kind they are. The kids like to stick the id tabs in their ears and then group all the tabs together in one area. So it's anyone's guess.

I thought all the cherry tomato plants were dead. I left the baby plants outside in the frost on more than one occasion and killed a whole bunch of them. Anyway, all it took was a heat wave and BAM, the cherry tomato plants took off. It's so cool. They don't have flowers yet but the big tomatoes do.

The peppers aren't impressing me. They're just not growing very quickly. I think they need a motivational speaker. Maybe if I plant some hot peppers?

Dragon Tongue Bush Beans came up today. The kids love these too and were looking for signs of dragons on the plants. I didn't have the heart to tell them... The watermelons are up and getting bigger by the day. We spotted cucumber leaves too. Popcorn and rainbow corn are planted (non GMO) and some summer squash. The second round of radishes are sprouting. Our raspberries are covered in leaves and have flower buds. And our lettuce, spinach and Swiss chard is ready to eat.

I'm a little worried about our potatoes. I have no idea what I'm doing. Two days ago I attempted to mound the dirt around the plant leaves but it rained and the rain washed the dirt away. I'm going to try again. We might not get potatoes this year. I'm okay with that.

I forgot about our peas... twice. I left the seed packs outside in the rain (oops). The pea seeds mixed with some flower seeds and some flax and broccoli. I spent about 45 minutes after the rainstorm, sorting seeds into piles in our wagon because the wagon was handy. Then my darling husband came by with the lawn mower and dumped the wagon out into the grass. So then I spent another hour picking pea seeds out of the grass. I felt like Cinderella, when she had to pick lentils out of the fireplace. I could have just bought a new pack of seeds but it was the principle of the matter.

I'm really getting off into a tangent. Didn't know planting peas was so chaotic, did you? Well it is here.

My point is that the peas were forgotten along the fence and when I found them, they had been nearly strangled by weeds and were dying of thirst. I fixed all that and now they're a bright green and have sweet white flowers. I think it will be worth it in the end but I did lose several plants to neglect.

Next year I'm going to make a pea tepee. My mom did that when I was a kid. I remember sitting inside the tepee pulling peas off the vines and eating them. What a tricky awesome way to get kids to eat veggies.

I'm proud of the plants because I grew them from seed. Nothing from the Home Depot nursery this year.