Garden Week 3

My windowsill garden in the kitchen!

Well, it's the end of the week again (woot!  I get to spend a whole weekend with Mike!)  and it's time to monitor the success of the garden!  Well, to be honest, this is for me (because I love looking back and seeing how much can change in a week) and for the world wide web (so you can learn from my mistakes and enjoy seeing having a garden if you can't have one personally!).  Last Saturday was a big day for the garden!  We went and got starter plants (because even though our house is filled with windows it seems we haven't found that good spot to get starters to grow successfully yet) and planted a good deal of our plants!  It was a really productive weekend over all (it was insanely busy since Mike ended up doing a good deal of work from home on top of everything else we had going on).  Let's take a look at the "goods" shall we?

The herb pool (although it looks like some squash is coming up in here too!)

The carrots in the pool garden are growing like CRAZY!  I'm really excited :)  (Remember, this is a herb garden plus whatever seeds decide to come up from last year before we put the tomatoes in :P)  So far this fella seems to be doing really good!  I just can't wait until I can take the trellis out (it's there to keep big puppy from using this as an obstacle course).  You can see where the patches of herb seeds were planted and I hope they keep growing like crazy!  

The Snap Peas and vine flowers I'm using to make my "wall of green" around the patio/deck thing.

The peas and things for my "wall of green" have started sprouting!  I hope it works the way I want it to :)  

The potted flowers I have on the deck/patio thing

Since we attracted no bees last year, we're trying to balance out the rest of our gardening with more flowers so that we can draw those natural pollinators out!  (Trust me, nothing looks and feels more strange then going and "helping" your plants with a paintbrush...I feel like a perverted gardener when I do that >.>)  I can't say that I'm upset about this though.  I looove flowers!  Where we bought our baby plants (Joe Randazzo's), you got a flat of veggies and/or flowers for $9.00!  We got two flats, one of mostly veggies and one of entirely flowers!  (Mike is serious about this flower business this year ;) )

The terrarium that we found out for trash on our way home!

On our way home, we found the above little terrarium and stand out for trash!  After asking the home owner (who was outside) to make sure it was in fact trash, we rearranged the plants and made space for it in the car!  I've got a couple of flowers that still need to be potted on the shelf under it, but isn't it cute?  I'm hoping to get some sweet pea flowers to grow out of it and along the fence ultimately, but I love how cute it looks already :)  

The in ground flower garden.

Mike and I talked quite a good deal about how we wanted to do the garden.  We knew we had to have some form of a container garden, but what was our ideal?  Ultimately, as much as we loved the idea of the raised bed style gardens, it just isn't for us right now.  Since this is a rental home, we don't want to have to leave behind something like a really nice raised bed garden!  (Maybe we're being strange, but this is what we decided.)  The cool side of this is that I've been seeing so many awesome container garden ideas on pintrest that I felt confident going that route!  So, this year, we are working on having container gardens that can be put together cheaply for the people who don't have a good deal of space!  

Flowers and Bell Pepper Plants.

One thing I have learned so far about these container gardens is that it isn't a good idea to water at night, in the dark, when you can't see.  I had a great deal of apologizing and re balancing soil to do the next day!  Planting flowers in with the plants was something that Mike really wanted to do.  I believe all the flowers planted in with the plants are a form of marigolds and he remembered doing research last year and finding that they keep many of the "bad" bugs away from garden plants!

Eggplants and Bell Peppers.

It does make for nice photos though.  I love the bright colors of them and how they jump out at this stage in plant growth!

Cucumbers and I believe a watermelon plant or two.

We've had some great gardening weather this week though and I know the plants have been eating the sun up as if there was no tomorrow!

Green Beans...that haven't sprouted yet.

So, you remember that whole incident I mentioned with not watering when you can't see?  I hope I didn't destroy the green bean seeds!  These poor guys got the worst of my watering "experience".  Their poor little seeds were exposed for part of a morning (I didn't check the garden first thing that day of course!) in their sprouted state.  I can only keep my fingers crossed and hope that they come up!

Our five gallon bucket tomato plants!

As much as I wanted to plant five gazillion tomato plants, I settled for five.  I'm hoping to use these to construct the other "wall of green" for that patio.  So far, they seem really happy.  I know we have two Bonny's best plants, two Roma plants and I can't remember what the odd one was now!  (You can see my patio flowers in the background)  Behind them in front of that window is where the wildflower patch was planted.  It's finally showing some sprouts, but not very many yet!  (The strawberries also aren't growing at all yet :( )

The tomato plants are already starting to have blooms!

I know we have another container we want to plant and we'll probably do that not this weekend, but the next weekend.  We may also decide that what we were growing in there isn't worth really stressing about (to be honest, at this particular moment, I can't remember what we wanted to plant in it!).  We still need to get around to cleaning up the trash that blew into the yard over winter (meant to do that during the week this week, but spent the time working on the inside instead!).

Where our in ground veggie garden was last year.

We're turning the spot where the doomed in ground garden of last year was into our dining area.  I think it'll look nice ultimately, but there's a chunk of work to be done still!

The catnip/butterfly bush pot from the front of the house.

Bluebonnet and something else from the front of the house.

I guess that's all I really have to say today.  I have a couple of other really cool things to talk about, but those are cool enough they deserve their own post! (One's a craft review and the other is some home decor stuff!)  Until next time folks!