You're really growing on me....

So my trip went well. My parents garden is wonderful. I can't wait to have a real yard & be able to grow tons of stuff just like them. Of course I had to snap some pictures of it all.

(As you can see my baby boy really liked the tomatoes (notice the itty bitty teeth marks). I took more pictures but they are all on my other computer....)


Meanwhile at home in NC thanks to my wonderful neighbor, the rain, and my husband all of our back porch garden survived. My husband sent me these pictures while I was in FL.

I am super excited that everything has really taken off. I am really surprised that the sunflower is thriving so well in such a little pot, I didn't really expect it to grow. It's even getting a bud, I think it will have a flower soon. Tonight I plan on cooking with some of my basil. It smells so yummy. I'm not really sure when it should be picked but it smells good and it looks big enough so I guess I'll see how it tastes tonight.

Our tomatoes are popping up all over the place right now. 2 of the plants have 2 growing and one has 3!! Can't wait to pick some. I don't eat raw tomatoes but my husband and my son love them. (I'm just excited I have managed to grow something and it stayed alive! :) 

 

The Jalapenos have buds all over them! My husband LOVES peppers and if the buds are any indication of how many will grow he is going to have plenty to eat.

 

The bell peppers are growing finally too. I kept picking on my husband for packing the seeds so tight. For a while there I thought nothing was going to happen. He proved me wrong (damn!) but I am happy that they are growing. We're not sure that they are going to have enough time to sprout any peppers but if it takes too long we will just move them inside and see what happens. Speaking of inside, we are planning to buy some houseplants. Part of our whole "being green" thing. I saw a special about how your indoor air is more polluted than outside and that houseplants can eliminate up to 90% of toxins in your home. That was all I needed to hear. Guess my next blog will be about our "indoor jungle". haha.

The little pot is lavendar (at least I think it is I forgot to mark it when I planted it. oops!) Speaking of all the other flower seeds I planted individually, they didn't make it. Only two of the Lavender. I did however get a bouquet from my wildflowers. They managed to make it even though I planted the whole packet of seeds. 

Leaving you with two pictures today. 

The littlest bee I've ever seen. (its like he was made for that little flower :)

And two bugs gettin' busy on my sunflower....

buds & blooms

So my knights went AWOL. Literally hours after I wrote my last blog praising them for sticking around they all disappeared. So i ended up throwing out all the plants that had aphids on them and I've been picking any bugs I see off by hand.

This is manageable right now but it is really giving me an idea about how hard organic gardening will be when I have a "real" one. On to more exciting news: My tomato plants are starting to bloom.

They are getting big too! I am very excited that they are actually growing!!

My oregano on the other hand is uh..um...dead

I moved my basil to a bigger pot because it didnt seem to be doing anymore growing in the small pot I had it in it is looking a little worse off than before I moved it but I am hoping it will perk back up

 

and I have no idea when to pick the basil either. I was reading something about picking it right before it blooms. Hell I didnt even know basil had flowers. Mine doesnt have any buds yet. Guess I'll know soon enough.

The bell peppers are finally starting to sprout. I picked on my husband because he packed them so tight I told him they would not be able to grow. He enjoyed pointing out that they were coming up.

My wildflowers are starting to bud and bloom too. I have no idea what any of the flowers are because I just dumped the whole packet of seeds but they look pretty

The sunflowers are getting big also. Hoping they will survive they kind of fell over the other day and I had to put some more dirt in there to prop them back up. 

I will be going to visit Florida soon and I will have to count on my neighbors for a few days and then the hubby to take care of all the plants. Hoping to come home to some tomatoes growing.

And that is all for today but here is a random picture of a fly that was on my tomato plants

My Knights in Spotted Armor

So its been a little over a week since I separated the plants and they seemed to be doing well. Then I noticed their leaves were turning a little yellow. Of course I have no effin idea what yellow leaves mean but in an attempt to feel like I have a clue what I'm doing I began inspecting the plants. I found that there were some little green bugs under the leaves and on the stems. (I still have no effin clue if that's why my leaves turned yellow). Since I have done extensive reading on such things (8 chapters in Organic Gardening for dummies ;) I knew these little creatures were aphids. After actually checking a few places I found out that indeed that is what they are. Well it just so happened that we bought my son a Venus Fly Trap that day, so we decided that it might be hungry for a baby aphid. Now I know this may seem a little cruel but anyone who knows me knows that I am an insect lover. But these are trying to take over my plants and I cant have that. And so... we fed one to the fly trap. It took some tickling with a stem of grass to get the trap to close because the aphid was too small

But with a little coaxing it finally closed. Now I did feel a little vindicated but not much and so I decided it probably wouldnt be such a great idea to attempt to feed all the aphids to the fly trap.

Apparently aphids are common little pests for gardeners like myself (hey this is the internet I can pretend to be whoever I wanna be), but one of the better known enemies is the ladybug. Since I am trying to grow my veggies using organic methods I decided that buying some ladybugs would be the perfect answer. So off to the garden supply store I went and came home with a plastic bowl of live ladybugs.

Now since I dont have a REAL garden at the moment, I only let some of the bugs go. The directions said to wait until it was evening since the ladybugs would be less likely to fly away during that time. So that is what I did, it was really hard to keep them contained because they were all trying to come out at once and tragically i squished a few trying to get the lid back on (oops!). So i let them go last night and most of them didn't fly away at that time.

Unfortunately one of my knights met its end with the fly trap (sorry about that I didn't mean to drop you THERE) R.I.P ladybug....yea there was no glory in that one ;(

(If you look real close at the closed one on the bottom left u'll see a little orange spot inside thats her)

This morning I got up and checked to see how my little soldiers were doing and whether or not they decided to stick around and to my surprise quite a few were still out there roaming around. Although they must not have been hungry because after minutes of close inspection I found that they werent even hanging out on the plants with the evil aphids and to my disappointment I only got to see one get devoured (the ladybug in the picture at top is the one who I saw eat an aphid, but then she flew away). Either way they are hanging out and  that is a good thing. Hopefully the aphid population can be controlled now before they each have 6.9 million offspring (I actually read that they can have that many in as little as 6 weeks!!) As for the fly trap it is my hope that only aphids will venture in for a peek but I have a feeling I will lose a few more good soldiers. 

On a side note about aphids in 2007 when I still lived in Florida I took a photo of an ant and another bug on a plant. At the time I just thought the ant was laying the smackdown and I had no clue that the other bug was an aphid but apparently it is. It seems that aphids have an evolutionary advantage in that they produce sweet honeydew that attracts ants and in exchange for letting the ants have this sweetness they have some protectors hanging out on their leaves. I did read that there are often casualties as the ants need protein too but I suppose this is a small price to pay for the protection and also with millions of offspring who the hell's gonna miss a few?

Last but not least one of my sunflowers are sprouting (I planted two seeds), I have no clue if a sunflower can live in a pot but I guess I will know soon enough....

Separation Anxiety

So I went out and bought supplies to help me with my kitchen window-in a pot on my square of concrete-garden. Of course I took a picture to commemorate it. Anyways, today's projects included separating my nine tomato plants, planting some new seeds I bought, and after I was mocked by my dad (yea dad, I heard haha) who saw the picture of my jalapenos, I also attempted to separate the jalapeno plants.
I have never separated plants before and I had no clue what I was doing. My husband tried to do it (I guess he didnt trust me and he wants them tomatoes) but I refused to let him do it all. After all, I am supposed to be learning so eventually he will have no fear that I will murder our potential harvest. I took on the tomatoes first, seeing as there were only nine of those. It was not too difficult. I separated them all out (ok I'm lying my husband helped too, but I swear I did a few) and put them into little containers. If they make it I will be giving them away. If not, lets just pretend it never happened :)

The picture at the top of the blog is one of the individual tomato plants. The jalapenos were next. Let me just say that the reason the jalapenos ended up in this condition was because of my history of botanical homicide. I was so scared nothing would live that I decided it was logical to just dump the whole bag of seeds into the pot that way at least SOMETHING would live. Lesson learned. I let my husband handle the task of separating them, all I did was dump them out  (after posing with them, of course. I love my dad and decided to give him one more laugh before I did it). After getting a good look we found out there was no way we would be able to separate all the individual plants and so he just kind of ripped apart a few at a time (uh, not sure thats gonna work). We'll see how tough them jalapenos are (c'mon dont be a sissy, you can do it).

Next it was time to plant some seeds (see cheesy picture of me and a seed below)

I decided to plant some organic bell peppers, some sunflowers (per the request of my oldest son), some lavender, marigolds, and sweet pea flowers. I am not certain that the sunflowers will grow but I'm just seeing what works. 

The hubs planted the bell peppers

He does comb his hair- just not on Sundays (just kidding I love ya babe)

I planted the rest. (lavender,marigolds,Sweet Pea)

I comb my hair, but only on Sundays
(ok I lied, I didnt even comb it today)

At the end of our gardening session this is what we are left with

I'm not sure what will make it, but I think it's a good start. Hopefully in the coming weeks we'll be picking some tomatoes or peppers to eat, wait....how long does it take them to grow? Guess I'll know soon enough.