Tomato, Tomahto

Tomatoes
We have tomatoes coming out of our ears! :) I've made lots of tomato-basil pizza and tomato-basil pasta, homemade salsa, tomato sandwiches and anything else I can think of that includes tomatoes. Maybe I need to start canning them.

Isn't it nice to be blessed with such abundance?

Speaking of tomatoes and "tomahtoes", here's a cute video for your Saturday evening viewing pleasure.

Hope you are having a wonderful weekend!

Planting Pansies

Pansy
The girls and I planted pansies yesterday. Pansies usually do very well in the winter here and we often plant them in the fall so we can enjoy them until it gets too hot in the summer. They are winter hardy in zones 4 through 8 (we are in zone 7).

The girls aren't too fond of weeding and some other types of yard work, but they LOVE planting flowers and seeds. They are more willing to weed the flower beds if they planted the flowers. It's also a nice way for us to spend time together. We can enjoy being outside and being quiet if we want, or talking if we want.

Some of the neighbor children stopped by to see what we were doing and it turned into sort of an impromptu gardening lesson. They wanted to know why we were planting flowers in the fall, so I told them about pansies and how they can survive a freeze and even snow. We also turned up a few grubs while we were digging (ewww!) so we had a little talk about that too as I threw the grubs onto the sidewalk and encouraged the kids to stomp on them. I know, gross, but I would rather have them squished on the sidewalk where I can wash them off than eating my flower roots. :)

Enormous Produce!

First of all, I want to let y'all know that we are fine. We are not in coastal Texas. We have had some weather issues, but nothing like those poor folks in Galveston are facing.

Now, on to today's post! :) My mom has a lovely garden at her ranch, and she grows the most enormous produce! I don't know what it is about her garden... Last year, she had to pick her zucchini right away or it would grow to the size of baseball bats!

This week she came to town and brought me a watermelon and a pumpkin. The watermelon is HUGE! I couldn't get over it! I got out my bathroom scale and weighed it...35 pounds! Can you believe that? Our little watermelons are puny in comparison. I told her that our watermelons are "apartment size" and hers are "big house with a pool" size. :)

Here's the pumpkin which is very large too.


Here's the watermelon. I put an apple in the picture to give you an idea of how big it is. The apple is a fairly large red delicious.

I Love Tomatoes!

If you were my neighbor, I would take some tomatoes and peppers to you. :) We are over run!

Scenes From My Garden

Our garden is small and every square inch is overflowing. For inexperienced gardeners I think we're doing pretty well. :) Maybe we can expand a little next year.

In this one picture you can see basil, jalapeños, and two different kinds of watermelons.


Marigolds to keep away the bugs.


Another kind of pepper (neither Mike or I can remember what kind, but they are HOT).



And one of our 4 tomato plants.

Updates From the Garden

The garden is coming along well. We haven't harvested a huge amount yet, but I think we're about to be over run.

We set up our little garden plot a little differently than most. We put down several layers of newspaper (just the black and white part, not the slick ads), dampened it with the water hose, and put topsoil and compost over it. The grass won't grow up through the newspaper, but the plants can put their roots down through it. I'm not sure exactly how that works, but it does. We've also been using grass clippings as mulch around the plants. That seems to be working really well to keep the weeds at bay too. We edged the garden with wood from an old swing set. It's not too pretty but it works, plus it was cheap. :)

These are either watermelon or cantaloupe that Mike planted last week. He planted both and I'm not sure which is which.


These are jalapeños. We have several different types of peppers. Something is eating the leaves, so we'll have to figure out what to do about that. We haven't been using any chemicals on the garden.


These are tomatoes. We have several tomato plants of different varieties and they are thriving.


The garden has been a lot of fun and we really haven't put much money into it. We bought a few bags of topsoil (spending $20 at most), the tomato and pepper plants (maybe $15 for that) and the seeds for the other plants (about $2). I think we'll wind up with much more in harvest value. We also now have the garden well established for next year and a great compost pile going. Maybe we can even expand.

Coming up Roses

My Queen Elizabeth rose is blooming and looks SO pretty in my front flower bed. It was covered up with aphids, so I made some insecticidal soap by combining about a half Tablespoon of Dawn with a pint of water in a spray bottle. I didn't spray it on the buds that were already open. It burned a few of the leaves a little (I think you can see it in the picture), but it got rid of the aphids! If I need to spray again, I'll do it early in the morning or late in the evening when the rose isn't in the sun. I read that it is less likely to burn that way.

I'm tempted to cut some and bring them in the house, but they look so pretty in the front yard I don't know if I will.

What's Growing in the Garden?

So far we have lettuce, tomatoes, and peppers. Hopefully we'll soon be seeing the yellow squash, cantaloupe, watermelon, and cucumbers (I want to make pickles this summer). I also have a big pot on the back porch where I've planted oregano, cilantro, and basil.

Our garden isn't very big, so the plants will be sort of crammed in. We put down newspaper, then put topsoil mixed with compost on top. The newspaper is supposed to keep grass and weeds from growing up from underneath, but will let the roots of the vegetables grow down through it. We'll see how it works. We edged the garden area with leftover wood from an old wooden swing set.

We bought the compost this time from a home improvement store, but we have started our own compost pile for the future. It's currently mostly grass clippings, but we have added eggshells, apple cores and orange peels over the past few days.

Growing a Garden

This will be my first year to have a REAL vegetable garden and I am so excited! We've grown tomatoes before, and we planted all the flowers in my flower bed (and a few trees and shrubs), but that's about it. I don't really even know where to start other than the seeds I've purchased, so I'm doing a little research. I think I'm going to get a spiral notebook to keep track of what I am learning.

We live in a regular suburban neighborhood, but we have an over sized lot and a big backyard. I think I'm going to put the garden in the spot where we used to have an above ground pool. There's very little grass there for me to dig up and it's to the side of the house and not right off the back porch. That way people won't have to walk through it if we have a backyard barbecue.

I'll keep you posted on how it's coming along. :)