Garden Update 5

I know you all missed my Garden Update last week! I was in the hospital having my second son, so the garden was put on hold. But today, I am back in action! I have some AWESOME news (and some not so awesome news) to share.

The awesome news: my sunflowers and corn are already almost 3 feet tall! I have squash on my squash plants, little peppers on some pepper plants, some of my onions have little flowers at the top, I have tiny white flowers on some of my potatoes, and tiny flowers on my cantelope, cucumbers, and watermelon (and flower buds on some pumpkins!).

The not so awesome news: I only have 3 or 4 pumpkin plants left. After everything got stomped on, only 3 or 4 are still living and growing. I also only have 3 or 4 squash plants left. Maybe 5, but one is very small. That also is because of the goat and llama when they ran rampant through my garden. We had a rabbit sneak in last week, and it was eating my lettuce! But luckily it didnt do too much damage (though today while walking through my rows I saw the dang bunny hopping through our goat barn. Way too close for comfort!). And the weeds. After being basically neglected for an entire week, the weeds have grown tall and thick, and are even blooming flowers and thorns... however I have a surprise ending for those weeds. Tonight, the garden fought back (with me and my husband's help of course) and the majority of the weeds are no more. The aisles are basically cleared, and all I have left to do is weed out around the plants themselves, but now they can at least get the water and sun

Anyways, lets get on with the pictures!

Row 1:

Cantelope

Cucumber

Watermelon

Pumpkin

Row 2:

Potato

Carrots

Row 3:

Tomato

Tomato on the Tomato plant!

Row 4:

Onions (with flowers)

Row 5:

Peppers (with actual peppers. Ignore the cat on the left, lol)

Row 6:

Squash

(Not only do I have 5 squash plants living, but 4 of them are covered with squash once you look under the leaves! And some of them are big enough to pick already! Check this out, it's my pride of the garden right now):

Lots of squash!

Really big squash!

Salad Bowl Mix Lettuce

Caesar Mix Lettuce

Row 7:

Corn

Row 8:

Sunflowers

You will notice that I did not post pictures of the Eggplant and Banana Peppers that I am growing indoors. They have had no change since the last update, and I'm not sure I want to go through the trouble of trying to transition them to the outdoors, then transplant them into the garden (which needs to be weeded before sprouts can be put in the ground)... it might be a bit too much work for me this year. I am considering just moving them outdoors and seeing how they grow in the pots. If they make it, I will consider keeping them, but as I said it might just be too much to handle. I'll think about it throughout the week.

Okay, the vineyard. I had a cow go through the fence surrounding my vineyard a few days go, and I caught her eating off of my blueberry bushes. She also ate down an entire grape vine! She pushed the cage right off of it and ate every leaf but one. :( On the bright side, my lemon tree has doubled in size yet again, and is now just about to the top of the metal stake that held the original lemon tree. I'm a bit disappointed that it hasnt shot off any other branches--its just one shoot that goes straight up with leaves all down the sides-- but it's growing well, so I can't complain.

Lemon Tree

Blueberries

(I'm not going to show you the actual bushes this time, since there really is no change besides a few new leaves.)

Grapes (growing slowly, but nice and green)

 Now let's move on indoors. My herbs are growing pretty well... except that my mint didnt sprout at all, and my catnip only has one tiny sprout! Hm. My kitty isnt going to be happy with ONE leaf.


And my strawberry plants (they were moved to the kitchen window for more sunlight, but despite the beautiful shade of green the leaves have taken on, they are still growing slower than ever. I doubt they will be big enough to grow anything unless I move them outdoors. Very slowly, I just might start doing that.


Okay, my big finale. I was going to post this picture first, but I decided it would look better down here this time. This is a picture of my favorite view of the garden: standing at the end of the corn row and looking down the rows at the sunflowers, corn, squash, and lettuce. The best part? NO MORE WEEDS! Well, haha, mostly. My husband was so sweet today, he helped me mow down the aisles between the rows. So now I can actually SEE my veggies! And it looks like I have a pretty carpet of green to walk on while gazing at my garden, lol!!!