Back like WHOA

and.... I'm back! It has been a crazy couple of weeks/months and I have neglected my garden. But things have calmed down a bit so I was able to get in the dirt and get some things done this weekend!

First things first... it is a lot harder to grow things from seed than I thought! A lot of my seeds sprouted but didn't do a whole lot after that. Some things eventually became little plants (my beans and peas for example) but other things (all of the herb seeds, cabbage, chard, and beet seeds) never got past the sprout stage. I stopped watering things at some point and I'm sure that didn't help. Anyway, I threw in the towel and decided to buy actual plants this weekend.

NEW PLANTS

Red, orange, yellow and green bell pepper plants (who's coming over for fajitas later this summer? :)

Herbs (left to right: English thyme, oregano, sage, rosemary, dill (growing from seed), and basil - all in the random selection of pots I found around the house

Eggplants! I love eggplant but have not had much luck cooking it well (anyone have eggplant-cooking tips?)


NOT NEW PLANTS

Pole beans

There were a few little purple flowers and there are some teeny tiny beans growing on the plants now... very exciting! I planted some more beans along the fence (where the peas used to be) so hopefully those will sprout and start climbing. Peas love cold weather and I started them too late (apparently you're supposed to start them in February) - but I did get a few little peas (and they were delicious). Here's a picture of one:

Pea plant... with pea!

And finally... my sunflower plants did the best out of everything, because in spite of not being watered they grew like WHOA. The biggest one is over two feet tall already! (The seed packet says they can grow up to six feet tall)



Sunflowers I can't wait to see what colors the flowers will be (they come in all variations of red, yellow and orange)


VOLUNTEER PLANTS: update

One of the most interesting things about this gardening experience so far is the unexpected role my compost has played in what grows in the garden. Several things I did not intentionally plant have grown from vegetable/fruit that was in my compost. My volunteer plants include melons/cucumbers, tomatoes and potatoes. In my last blog post, the top photo is of some seedlings that came up, which I thought were honeydew melon (they looked exactly like melon seedlings... check out this photo from a seed company to see a picture that I thought confirmed my judgment of what type of seeds they were). I weeded those seedlings out because melon plants are huge and sprawl and I have limited space. Anyway, I was at Home Depot yesterday and I saw these seedlings:

Cucumber plants

The cucumber seedlings look exactly like the volunteer plants in my garden. So now I'm wondering if they were actually honeydew melon or if they were cucumbers! I decided to let one grow to find out (why not).

The other surprise I found in the garden yesterday were three little tomato plants. Here is a picture of the biggest one:

Volunteer tomato plant

I think it is funny that these volunteer plants grew so well and so quickly, when the ones I planted from seed took months to grow and are still smaller than the volunteers!
The tomato plant I grew from seed

Bailey
I forgot that I have this ridiculous harness/leash thing for Bailey (my roommate and I got it for him in college when he was a kitten and we wanted to let him roam around in our backyard). So I let him hang out outside while I worked in the garden. He enjoyed his little field trip outside and had a grand old time rolling around on the cement and eating the neighbor's grass.

AND FINALLY...

The other things I did this weekend included:
- planted nasturtium seeds in between the sunflowers (in spite of planting them twice, the sunflowers just did not want to grow in certain spaces along the front of the fence... so I'm wondering if maybe nasturtiums will? Plus, the flowers are edible in addition to being gorgeous!) I've had good luck sprouting both of this type of seeds in potting soil/seedling trays, but who knows how they will do in the ground.

- planted onion seeds near the fence next to the pole beans
- weeded out tons of grass, clover, and other little plants that were enjoying my soil during my gardening hiatus

View of my garden from the steps after a weekend of hard work...

That's all... thanks for checking out what's Blooming in Bloomingdale! :-)