My Garden... So Far

I grew up surrounded by gardens and accomplished gardeners.  I love working with the earth and growing things; there's really nothing like it.  I love watching tiny seedlings as they push their way through the ground and stretch upward toward the sun.  So of course, it made perfect sense that I'd return to my roots some day and plant a garden.  And this was the year!

I have a very small yard, so I have a combo garden of sorts:  A bunch of plants in large pots (many courtesy of Freecyclers!) and a bunch in a raised bed built by my wonderful husband.  I've always had an easy time growing tomatoes (in fact, I had over 30 of them in pots in my backyard way back in 2000 - I can never let a seedling just die, so I cultivate every single one to the best of my ability), so I planted cherry and roma varieties.  In addition, my daughter grew some tomato seedings in her preschool class this year, and one survived, so we have that one as well.  I also opted for some snow peas and bell peppers, since they tend to be pricey in the grocery store, as well as lima beans, since my older son loves them.  Finally, I sprinkled a few carrot seeds around one side of the raised bed.  Phew!

We've had a nice little crop so far.  First to come up were the snow peas.  They've been super sweet and crisp!  My two older kids loved them and looked forward to snacking on them each day.  They've mostly finished producing, but a few of the plants recently sent out brand new shoots and blooms, so I'm hoping for a few more peas before we have to call it quits.

The tomatoes are doing well, though none are ripe as of yet.  All 15 plants (well, roughly 15) were very, very small for a long while until we had a sudden heat wave a few month ago.  When the temperature rose, the tomato plants shot up!  Way, way up.  My tallest one, which happens to be in a pot, is taller than I am; I have to stand on a chair to reach the top, and it's still stretching upward even now!  It has more than 60 tiny green tomatoes currently percolating on its stems.

The peppers are doing ok.  I initially started by planting them in the raised bed, but some sort of bug snacked on them in a very big way so I transplanted them all to pots, and they're now much improved.  (And they actually have leaves again.  :) )  The largest plant has several buds forming, so I'm hoping for a few peppers over the next few months.  Great for fajitas, after all!

Finally, the lima beans.  Mmm, so yummy.  I'd never tried to grow them before, but I'm finding that so far, they're super easy to grow!  They seem to love the growing conditions in my raised bed.  They started running (shooting up viney arms) about a week ago and the most mature of them have started forming teeny tiny lima bean pods.  So exciting!

Teeny, tiny lima bean pods!

Here's a lima bean plant that's winding its way up a support pole.  Good stuff!

So that's about it for now with my garden.  Stay tuned.  The harvest is coming soon!