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It’s that exciting time of year when we start to see little plants popping up in our garden. Want to see how my garden grows? Here, I’ll show you my garden plot(s), then I hope you’ll tell me about your garden if you’re growing one this year too!
We’ve already enjoyed lots of spinach and green leaf lettuce. See the jungle of spinach behind the lettuce? It looks terrible – but we’ve actually let it go on purpose. It will re-seed all by itself this way, then give us another crop in the fall. Then, it will come up again on its own next spring. It’s a pretty nice system. (We do the same with the green leaf lettuce.)
It doesn’t seem like much to look at yet, but we have several rows of green beans. We see some gaps in there that tell us we’ll need to replant a few.
This year, we’re trying okra again. It takes a lot of heat and sun for okra to grow well, so it doesn’t always work here in Nebraska. Here’s hoping!
Here’s a close-up of one okra plant:
Notice how we have plastic buckets and such around many of our plants? (And by we I mean Matt and the boys. I can take no credit for all this work!) The protection around our plants is an effort to keep the bunnies from getting to them. Those “cute wittle wabbits” are sooooo stinkin’ not cute when they nibble and kill our plants. ;)
Matt uses our raised garden bed area for a variety of sweet peppers. These are his babies. :)
Here’s a sweet pepper close-up. Surely the rabbits won’t be able to climb up the slippery tin surrounding the plants!
Our back yard “L” shaped garden plot has all of our tomato plants this year. If we get a good crop, I’ll be able to make a year’s supply of tomato sauce, tomato soup, and some salsa.
Somewhere in one of those plots, we also have a couple hills of spaghetti squash planted. We never plant cucumbers, summer squash, or zucchini because everyone around here always has plenty to share!
So how about you? Do you have a garden this year? If so, what are you growing? And what else would you like to share about this Gratituesday? What are you thankful for?
What a great idea to use those containers to protect your plants! I use extra food containers to cover my plants when they are little in order to try to protect them from becoming damaged by frost. Letting your lettuce & spinach go to seed is brilliant. I need to try that this year. Thanks for the tip! I have planted squash, lettuce, spinach, and kale. We haven’t harvested anything yet, but I love the fresh food and the savings.
I’ve never seen anyone do that before but it is such a logical idea.
This week I’m thankful for the help of my husband
http://sandrasark.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/with-little-bit-of-help-from-my.html
As my family and I are starting to build a house this year, the full blown garden of last year will have to be put on hold. We’re hoping for some small containers of tomatoes and peppers with pumpkins and zukes in the “big garden” only. Matt’s idea of the buckets is wonderful and I can’t wait to show my MIL…she’s our garden master and teaching me as we go. Thanks for sharing; love your blog!
So far my garden is five pots on my driveway with a zucchini plant in each .
I also tried your idea of growing potatoes in an old trash can. So far so good – 8 plants are almost to the top of the can! But how do I know when to harvest the potatoes?
you harvest when the plant dies. (awhile after flowering)
Thanks!
We have very little garden space, so we only plant continuous, high-yield type plants – lots of peppers, tomatoes, and a few cucumbers!
I’m thankful for our worship leader and his example this week: http://www.anestintherocks.blogspot.com/2014/06/gratituesday-saying-goodbye.html
Yes my friend and I are sharing a garden at her house. We plan on planting our garden thursday and friday this week. A little late but with a cold spring and having to work the garden area. Plan better next year.
I *had* cucumbers until a wittle bunny decided to munch on them! I will have to try the buckets!
15 tomato plants for the two of us and a bunch of herbs. My parents have a huge garden where most of our other stuff will be sourced.
Our whole lot is only about 1/3 acre, so we don’t have a lot of space but we have a 20′ x 30′ raised vegetable garden in the back yard, a 10′ x 4′ on the side, grape vines, an asparagus bed and a dwarf apple tree.
So what do you do about the beans and the bunnies? I ask because all week I’ve had to chase a rabbit out of my bean plants (that are the size of yours right now). He waits for me to go back inside and comes back to eat them. I have way too many to put the buckets around them. I thought the fencing that claims to keep rabbits out around the garden would have worked, but they are jumping over it. :(
Rabbits can’t stand the smell of garlic and onions, so I plant them around the border of my garden a couple of rows wide (takes up about 8″) it fools them into thinking they’ve run into an onion field. I haven’t had any problems with bunnies eating my plants. For me, it’s the birds pecking my tomatoes, so this year I’m going to try a suggestion I read in a magazine to paint rocks red BEFORE tomatoes start to grow. The idea is that birds will think the rocks are ripe tomatoes and discover that they are nasty rocks and leave the REAL tomatoes alone when they ripen.
Grow parsley and clover to feed the bunnies. It makes them happy and they leave my garden alone. It may work for you too. Our beds are just getting going here in northern Iowa. We’ve had a weird spring and I’ve been laid up a bit so they are a little behind. This is a new town for us and a new yard to grow in. The only critter issues we’ve had so far was a crazy squirrel that dug some trenches in the beds the first week. I think he was looking for a cool spot to lay.
I love to grow my own food! We’ve already had a handful of strawberries out of the garden. Love that okra too! I put it in the back of the flower bed this year. It’s such a pretty plant. And if the season is too short for it to produce, I wont feel like I wasted valuable veggie garden space. :)
For your okra, I wonder if you could put some rocks around them to help add more heat? I have heard of people doing that for heat loving pepper plants. They say the rocks absorb heat and helps it to heat up more around the the plant. I have never tried it, so don’t know if it works. Just a thought though.
Our strawberry bed has just started giving us ripe berries. My boys (6 and 3) have eaten them all out in the yard so far. I’m hoping to get some inside soon, as more ripen than they can eat at one time. :)
My perennial herb bed has come to life (tarragon, chives, thyme, sage, parsley, oregano and cilantro). The parsley and cilantro reseed themselves each year.
Our peas are climbing the trellis, as is the grape vine we planted last year. The bell peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, basil, zucchini, yellow squash, and tomatoes are in the ground. The cabbage, carrots, beets, radishes and green beans are peeking through the ground.
The rhubarb is ready to start making pies.
We haven’t had much luck with our lettuce and spinach the past few years. I think it’s time to buy fresh seed! Oh, and flowers! I bought a bunch of flowers to plant in pots and planters around my yard this year. They’re beautiful, they smell wonderful, and they make me very happy!
I would love a garden but I don’t know where to begin, and I tend to not like to go outside when it’s hot so gardens usually die. I just need someone to come do the work for me, I’ve never found any takers, lol. I am in Oklahoma and it’s already in the 90s so I will have to wait til next year to give it a go. Every summer I get the urge to garden, but I never know when to start planting.
Hi Laura! Loved the peek at your garden! I am working on my green thumb (which means I have quite a challenge to work around, lol). Right now we’re trying to get our soil up to par, so we don’t have much growing at this point. I did a soil analysis today, and I’m reading through The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible in hopes of figuring out what I actually need to do next! :)
My oldest daughter is 10, and she has quite the green thumb, which means I’ll still get some yummy squash this summer. I’m super thankful for that! :)
This year I planted my tomatoes, and peppers in 5 gallon kitty litter buckets that a co worker gave me. I have more tomatoes on the vines than ever in the raised beds. I put the buckets in the front of the house facing south along the drive way. so far the only varmits bothering them are the grandkids. They like to touch them!!!!!!! I am going to try putting some squash in the buckets also. The hot peppers I put in flower pots on the porch so that the kids would not touch them and then burn their mouths or eyes. The beans are on their own in the raised beds. I put the dog hair from the vacum cleaner around the borders to discourage the squirrels.
We struggle with squirrels stealing our garden produce. It’s so frustrating to find a cucumber nibbled on across the yard, or a just about ready to ripen tomato ripped from the plant and chewed on!!! We have cats, and I wonder if spreading some cat hair around the plants would help. Thanks for the idea!
Mix some salt peter with water and spray on them. It tastes bitter I have been told. Kept the raccons from eating our pumpkins years ago.
Thanks, Ruth! I’ll give that a try. I’ve searched and searched online, and haven’t found anything practical (to us) for discouraging the squirrels.
When you let your lettuce and spinach go to seed, do you keep them watered? Any speical instructions?
Typically, the spring rains take care of it. We usually don’t water it until it is up and growing well.
We are trying a garden for the first time this year. First, we dug out a tiny little (20 inch square) bed where a bush had died, mixed in some compost, and put in one cherry tomato plant, one lemon thyme, and a hearty sprinkling of basil seeds. The tomato plant is now taller than I am! It is seriously growing AND producing like mad, and the basil is almost tall enough I will try cooking with some.
Then back to Redenta’s we went. A week or two ago, we planted another $15 along the back wall: a strawberry plant, a squash, a zucchini that looked pitiful and yellow at the store (but it had new green growth at the center, so we are trying anyway), a watermelon (way down the line from the rest), a few cantaloupe seeds, and a circle seeded with corn and pole beans (the kid at the store suggested the pairing so the beans could climb the corn stalks).
No produce yet on any of those… The squash went to flower and I could see a yellow bulb starting behind one, but then the leaves that were spotted white turned yellow and died and the flowers followed. I sprayed it with a canola oil mixture Google suggested and got nice green growth back, so fingers crossed. And the beans have shot up to o ershadow the corn. Oops. Next year we will give the corn a few days to get started before dropping in the beans…