June 13th

Rainbow chard, flanked by beans on the left and squash on the right. This very chard made its way along with some spinach and herbs into our eggs this morning. I don't think I've ever felt better about something I cooked than that frittata.

Roma paste tomatoes. This plant came from the BUGS after school program at the Living Classrooms Foundation. It proves that it's not necessarily Wal-Mart that makes for an early fruit.

Those would be the first tomatoes that showed up a couple weeks ago. Bush Goliath, courtesy of Wal-Mart. At the base you will see some strands of baby onions and little volunteer tomatoes from last years' seeds.

Can you see them? Tiny, fuzzy little beans the pretty white flowers of future beans.

The largest squash plant in the front left, zucchini I believe, could easily take up the entire corner of the garden. I do believe it will be growing into the lawn. Soon.

So. There it is, the garden is under way. I have used lots of the herbs and it's already feeding us chard. It is a very low maintenance garden; the only things I have done are thinning and weeding. I casually weed once a week, but have learned to be careful doing this in front of the children. When small people see big people pulling up plants from their roots from the soil patch they tend to think it looks really fun. And that's how we lose our squash.

Lessons learned? Marigolds are natural pest fighters, and it is great to pop them into the beds or nearby. I think I should be trimming off any sick looking leaves to keep whatever that is from spreading. I'm not actually doing that, but will probably get to that this week.

Questions? Should I be fertilizing and with what?

Not that I'm the most faithful (or interesting, gracious, I read this all back when I need to sleep!) blogger, but I will mention that I'm going to be leaving the garden to the neighbor for a couple weeks and will be back with pictures the week following the 4th of July weekend. I'm hoping to start harvesting early tomatoes and beans at that point, but that is simply hope as I have no experience or research to tell me if that is realistic.

Happy gardening all.

June 12th

There are tiny beans growing on my bean plants. I wonder if I should be doing anything to help the plants along?

Also, my chard is looking much more like the bunches I buy. I am planning to lop off quite a bit for dinner tonight and eggs tomorrow.

Tiny roma tomatoes are starting to develop on my second tomatoe plant.

Did I mention in May 30ths blog that due to heavy rain one of my tomatoes broke? Well, my mom was in town and she replanted it with one leave spot below ground and it has rerooted and looks promising now.

Squash does not reroot.

I'm going to go look for several more basil plants this weekend and put them in a pot so I can make lots of pesto this summer for the freezer.

I read a nice article on canning. I would love to learn this over the summer, but I think to be realistic, I will plan to start this two summers from now once I get a little more comfortable with the growing part.

I'll try to get more photos today. It's a jungle out there.