Garden....6 weeks later

In the beginning...

My small starter garden.  I wanted to make sure everything would take before I went crazy with plants and money.

My son's Lima bean plant looks beautiful.  We started it from seeds and it grew quickly. 

                                                   

It's flowering here.

Now it's riddled with holes.

This tomato plant seems to be thriving.



See the nice green tomatoes?  Bad news...they've been like this for about 2 weeks.  They're not getting any bigger or redder.  They're not cherry tomatoes.

Look at all the leaves...full of holes. I'm so sad. I can't seem to get rid of whatever is eating it. I even invested in an organic pest spray. It seems to have slowed them down but I think it's too late now. Nothing seems to be flowering anymore.

 

Our cucumber plant.  It's had several beautiful yellow blossoms but something keeps eating them off.

Pepper plant.  Nothing is flowering and the leaves have small holes and tears in them.

One teeny, tiny bean on one of our pathetic bean plants.



Ironic that the last garden I planted three years ago at our old house flourished and overflowed.  I couldn't keep up with the wealth.  Silly me figured that the soil would be similar since we're less than a mile from our old place.  I don't know if I should try again next year or not.  I purposely put the one bean plant in a container on the deck to see if it would fair better.  It's not doing much better. 

The only thing that seems to be growing is my container of basil.  I'm glad it's doing good but it's the only thing.

My flowers are not doing so well either.  A lot of my flowers have disappeared and the leaves are non-existent.

No leaves on this flower.



Ironic that the only thing that seems to grow unharmed is the ivy and hostas the old owners planted.  It was everywhere.  I don't know what to do anymore.  So, I guess I'm going to let nature take it's course and hope something good comes of all my hard work.

First Garden

We our purchased our first home almost three years ago. One of the things on our list of must haves was a fenced in backyard and we got it. Unfortunately, it's a two family house in the middle of town without much land. We have a patch 4x8 in the front on either side of the small front cement porch. I'm guessing since I'm not good at figuring out square footage. The back has a paved drive, a small shed, 2 trees (well one's only a stump now) and a wood deck coming out from the basement. Because it's like a city type lot we don't have much lawn left after the deck, driveway and shed. Because of the trees there's not much full sun. It's perfect on hot sunny days but not so much when you want to plant a vegetable garden.
It took a lot of work and manuvering some things around but I think we created the best spot. Because I'm unsure of how well it's going to do I only got a few plants this time around. I'll expand next year if it works out and if we're still living here.
My kids had a great time helping me. They helped me dig up the soil, weed and put down the mix of Miracle Grow soil and potting soil. My daughter handed me the plants after I dug the holes for each of them. I chose to plant vegetables I knew were versatile, especially ones I could serve hot or cold.
We planted:
*Cherry tomatoes
*Regular tomatoes (don't remember exact kind...oops.)
*Yellow zucchini/squash
*Orange peppers
*Yellow peppers
*Orange snacker size peppers
*Burpless cucumbers
*String beans

I still have to get the wire for the tomato plants. And possibly something for the beans to climb up.
Tomorrow I'm getting more soil. I'm going to plant flowers at the end of the driveway and in the front. I got a few seed packets for shade loving flowers that my kids can go crazy with by one side of our fence. There's dm almost empty bed there from when we bought the house. I was never sure what to put there. I also have a few large containers so I'm planting basil in one and cilantro in the other and putting them in the sunniest part of our upper deck. I can't wait. I'm so excited!