June 1st, 2008
After looking at our large backyard, and watching my girlfriend plant tons of flowers out front, it finally occured to me
that perhaps I should try my hand at a small garden. Something more useful than flowers, that actually gives back to us in the form
of fruits and veggies. Maybe it would be a slight help to our food budget, and a good way to use the land, and all that precious sun energy being beamed down all day. So
Ligi and I set up a small garden, with three tomato plant varieties, one cucumber, and one eggplant. It took some time for me to dig out the land and set things up,
mixing our red clay with enough soil. Let's see how this works out.
June 11th, 2008
The veggies seem to be growing in nicely...some green tomatoes are appearing on the Bush Early Girl, and a few on the Bonnie as well. The cucumber looks sick, and the eggplant doesn't look too promising; it has officially become Ligia's.
June 14th, 2008
Red tomatoes appearing!
June 30th, 2008
The growth has been incredible. In just two weeks, the Bush Early Girl has produced three or four tomatoes. Many were dented or somewhat imperfect, but it's a
start! The eggplants are starting to grow in as well. The cucumber was growing like a vine, so we bought a trellis for it to climb up; sure enough, it started wrapping little vine/tentacles
around the beams and scaling it's way up. It's ALIVE!! One yellow tomato was salvageable from the large yellow tomato plant, which blew over in a recent
storm. The yellow tomato tastes AMAZING! A little sweet zing - this garden idea was great!
July 14th, 2008
The cucumber is huge. We finally cut it today and diced it into salad. Fantastic! Ligi took the largest eggplant inside, and cut another small, malformed one off.
Still two more eggplants growing! the other two, smaller tomato plants haven't been doing so well; it seems their growth may be stunted. After reviewing
the packaging, it turns out I didn't cut off the bottom of their organic pots; so their roots are probably scrunched up and unable to expand. We had to dig
them up and remedy this. Thanks hun! We also added one red pepper, for a total of 6 plants in the garden now. I've buried an oddball tomato here and
there as well; perhaps those will germinate soemtime in the future.
August 5th, 2008
Now there are a TON of cucumbers growing. One got huge overenight, the first one, and a second is already medium-sized.
Together there are 6 more tiny ones, like in the third picture, coming in - it looks like each flower is yielding a cuke.
August 9th, 2008 - visitors
Ligi's flower garden had some visitors today - first this beautiful butterfly. Then, while taking pictures of the butterfly,
I heard some buzzing nearby. Sure enough, a big hummingbird was getting a taste as well!
