Growing... Growing... Growing!!!

One of the most enjoyable parts of gardening is watching the garden grow!  I love seeing how my tomatoes are so much taller now than they were at my last post.  It's so enjoyable!

 Above are my cucumber and cantaloupe.  These were started as seedlings.  Below are 2 different tomatoes.  The small, barely visible is a Jelly Bean, started as a seed in this planter.  The larger is a Cherokee Purple, started from a 4" pot.

 

 Above is one of many tomato plants which is loaded with a tomatoes in various stages of readiness.  This plant is the Better Bush tomato.  Below is a pic of all of the tomatoes: Lemon Boys in the yellow buckets, Husky Red Cherry in the white bucket (close up of the ripening, barely orange tomatoes 2nd pic below!), and Better Bush in the orange.

 

 

 Peppers.  This year I have 3 pepper varieties.  4 total plants of Sweet Banana Peppers.  1 plant each of Jumbo Nacho Jalapeno and a regular Jalapeno.

 Watermelons in the above green bucket and strawberries in the below trick-or-treat buckets.  Strawberry plants are loaded with blooms and baby green strawberries!  My girls are so excited!

 And then my zucchini and eggplant.  These are also started from seedlings, so I expect they will really take off growing by the next post!

Happy Gardening!!!

Here it is!  Presenting my Bucket Garden for the Spring 2011 gardening season...

 Featuring an assortment of tomatoes, watermelon, cantaloupe, cucumber, peppers, basil, parsley, strawberries, lemon balm, mint, stevia, catnip, eggplant and zucchini!  There are just so many options, don't limit yourself on what to plant in your container garden!  Just add a bit of this and a bit of that... The veggies that you love the most!

  With melons, go for smaller varieties like Sugar Baby and Moon and Stars. Any 'bush' variety works great, but isn't required! The above large green bucket has my watermelons:  Sugar Baby, Moon & Stars and Malali.

 And above is my "tea garden".  The only plant really missing is the actual tea plant, "Camellia sinensis".  I'm working on that, but it might be next year before we have this one to add to the tea garden.

I also added 2 Earthboxes to my container garden this year.  I'm excited to see how they compare to my Bucket Gardening.  Consider that I enjoy watering my garden daily... I don't expect a huge difference... but time will tell!  Stay tuned and ...

Happy Gardening!!!

It's time to start planting!!!

Last year's bucket garden was such a success, that I just have to do it again!  And it is definitely time to start planting.  This year will again be about the tomatoes.  My Lemon Boy tomato was so yummy that I already have 2 plants in buckets for this year.

My girls also insisted on a nice sweet pepper in the garden this year.  Thus, we have 4 Banana Peppers in buckets and ready to grow.

And thus it begins.... :-)  Many great things yet to come!

Fall Garden

My spring garden began to wither away in late July and early August.  Many of the tomatoes just quit producing and started to burn up.  So I trimmed them back quite a bit and they started to grow again in late August and early September.  Thus began the Fall Garden!

Just for fun, we also planted some chrysanthemums.  And since this is about Bucket Gardening... What better way to plant fall flowers than in trick-or-treat buckets. At $1.00 per bucket, it's hard to go wrong!  What a fun floral display!

Above: To the back yard for the edible garden.  I planted a Sugar Baby watermelon mid September.  We're  not really sure if it will have time to produce completely, but I thought I'd give it a try.  It's doing very well in the bucket, so I'll definitely try this again in the spring!  Oh, and maybe add a couple of cantaloupes as well.  Also pictured, Better Boy tomato (bought on summer clearance) and the Patio Tomato, trimmed way back.

 Above:  Far left is a squash, middle is my Lemon Boy.  It has so many tomatoes on it right now that I'm just AMAZED!  I can't wait for them to start turning!  They're all green right now.  The right most bucket is a stray tomato from the kitchen.  It was a sweet surprise when it started producing small grape tomatoes.  Wonderful flavor!  Also in a bucket with an Anaheim Pepper.

Above:  Sweet 100 Tomatos.  This duo of orange buckets are just vines galore!  I had to craft some ropes to hang the vines and keep them off of the ground.  Also in yellow is a lingering squash from spring.  Doing well. :)

 My daughter, Alexandra, is showing you that the watermelon is producing!  YEAH!  Keep growing...

I also picked up on summer clearance a couple of sweet peppers.  Showing here is a beautiful purple sweet pepper.  The flavor is strong, though I think the first one I picked was a bit green as well. These are #2 and 3.  I'm letting them stay on the vine just a little longer to sweeten up. 

Happy Gardening!

Harvest

Squash and Sweet 100s.

 

It's certainly been a while since I've blogged about my garden.  And I have yet to show off some of my harvests!  So here you go.  These are several different day's worth of harvest.  Usually the Sweet 100's disappear as soon as they are washed. 

Fresh basil from the herb garden makes some great Pasta al Pesto!

More squash, tomatoes and peppers.

And more tomatoes!  Seriously, these get eaten quickly here

And here is one of those beautiful Lemon Boy tomatoes sliced up for Miss Addison.  She just LOVES these!  Just a tad tart with a wonderful sweet follow-up.  And beautifully sliced as well.

Happy Harvesting!!!

Trials of gardening...

In many ways, my garden is doing well.  Being that this is my first year to garden in a very long time, I'm thrilled with the garden thus far.  But it's not all perfect either...

I've actually separated the buckets into two areas.  The yard has the tomatoes and squash for the most part and the peppers, herbs etc are now on the porch.  The tomatoes were getting so big, I had to spread the buckets out to make room for harvesting and so everyone could get some sun.

The strawberries are growing wonderfully.  Addison, my youngest, is forever on watch for the latest sweet pick.  They've not produced a lot as yet, but are consistently harvesting 1-2 small strawberries a week.  Just enough to keep Addison on active watch!

I have an Anaheim pepper in a Topsey Turvey planter which is now doing well.  It had a rough start with heavy West Texas winds, but is now producing nicely.

I have a Cubanelle Sweet pepper which is also doing well, though it had some issues, too.  I'm still a bit nervous that we might still have issues with a fungus of some sort.  I sprayed it last week because some of the fruits had bad spots and also the joints of the plant seem to be turning.  I harvested the bad fruits as well and the remaining seem to be spot-free.

Now, on to the good stuff, right!  Tomatoes... Some are producing, and some seem to be a bit slow.  I have lots of small Sweet 100's, but the plants appear to have some issues.  I'm researching now to see if I can find out what's going on there.  If anyone has suggestions, please feel free to comment!  I'm stumped...

The leaves are starting to yellow and fall off.  But also, on the stalks, I have spiky growths.  It's very strange... These were small bumps that I notices last week (maybe week before) and then with all the recent rain, they became spiky growths today.  Very strange... I'm thinking some sort of fungus as well, especially considering the mushrooms that have also popped up in the soil.

My Lemon Boy is producing, but not as well as I'd like.  He also has the spiky growth on his stalks.  And his leaves are curling... Not nice!  Yet we did pull off two small ripe tomatoes from him today.  His fruit is tangy and really delicious!  Great to add more color to a salad.

The squash is a consistent producer, but we have no bees in the back yard, so most of the blossoms have gone bad and thus has the fruit.  I now know that lack of bees means I need to hand pollinate.  So that chore has begun.  Maybe we'll have some good fruits soon!

Happy Gardening, and Happy 4th of July!

So we went on vacation....

While on vacation, we borrowed a couple of teens from a friend to cat-sit and keep the garden watered.  They did a great job!!!  I was oh so happy to see all of my plants were still thriving when we got home!

Now, that said, no one is as good in MY garden as I am.  So while they did fantastic, I still had some work to do.  Some of the plants got dry and/or sun baked (it was 90-100 degrees here while we were away).  The squash seemed to suffer the most.  But in all honesty, I think I underestimated the container space needed!  I made the mistake of putting 2 squash in one container... I'll have to stay on top of watering and fertilizer from here on.  I also did some re-arranging of the containers to better accommodate those that seemed to get too much sun.

My pepper plants all did FANTASTIC!  They love the heat, though, so I'm not terribly surprised there.  They also have plenty of room in each container.  Yummy!  My husband grilled up the first pepper of the season for his hamburger just a few short days after we got home from vacation.

And, I have to mention that my cats all very much appreciated the company while we were away.  I have one cat that usually gets serious attitude when leave for the weekend, so being that this trip (see that blog here) was for over a week, we really appreciated the help of Kayli and Hanah in keeping them happy. THANK YOU, Ladies!!!

Happy Gardening!!!