So excited!!!!

I am so excited, the garden is growing fast and furious and the money that I invested this year really seems to be paying off.

The tomatoes, that I was sure were fried and lost, are now almost 2ft high.

The tomatillos are still an experiment but growing quickly and fast going to bloom.

Every other day I'm pulling the plants back into the cages so that they grow straight up. They're growing fast and furious and trying to go every direction.

The 3 basil plants I put in around the tomatoes are doing extremely well. That is my oldest (was the only for about a decade), best fertiziled bed and they are loving it! The other 4 basils are in my herb bed that was built 3 years ago. They are not doing quite as well because the soil is not as well established but still doing quite nicely.

The oregano I planted 3 years ago in my herb bed is a monster! I dug half out before the plant really started growing and still had to whack back the plant this week cause it was threatening to smother my other herbs. I took a grocery bag full of oregano to work to give away and still have tonnes left in the garden! I foresee a huge batch of oregano pesto in my future (if I have the patience to pick off all those tiny leaves).

The sad pathetic romaine lettuce that I started from seed this year (my first seed expirement) were really leggy but I buried deep and they are growing amazing in my part shade bed. I'm so excited! I should be able to harvest nicely before the end of the month.

The potatoes seems to have recovered from our +100F weather which caused them to fall over, they are all upright and healthy looking now. Note to self, despite the full sun directions plant in part shade next year.

Looking back on my debates about investing in a CSA this year, I'm glad I decided to invest that money into expanding my garden instead. It's so sad to see the destruction to the crop fields that the flooding of the Missouri is causing. I will find other ways to help but I'm glad I'm not losing the garden/veggie funds.

Stay tuned, I'm yet to lose my mind with all the harvesting soon....

Long overdue!

Ok so I've been busy, to be honest that's an understatement!

So to catch up, I started seeds indoors this year to save money and over a couple weeks in March I started:
- Leeks
- Celery
- Parsley
- Summer Savory
- Roma Tomatoes
- Beefsteak Tomatoes
- Tomatillo's
- Eggplant
- Romaine
- Basil
- Marigolds
- Patty-pan squash
- Mammoth Sunflowers rota
and
- some annuals for the flower bed

Note to self: The squash and sunflowers do NOT need to be started early. Everything else should be started EARLIER!

I doubled the garden this year with a lot of help from the hubby, and as a result I've concluded that I need rotatiller. I've made out fine hand turning the soil up to now but oh my, that's a lot of soil now.

As of this morning the last of the beds was prepped and seeded. The garden as it stands now is:

Time for the tomato plants to go

I finally did it, I tore out the tomato plants today including the volunteer roma that was growing in the compost bin. I now have a large bucket of green tomatoes to decide what to do something with. I'm sure I'll make some fried green tomatoes (the healthier kind of frying) but what else? I'm trying to decide between chow-chow and dutch relish.

The fun surprise of tearing out the volunteer tomato plant on the side of the compost bin was that I discovered not one but two avocado trees growing there also.... volunteers of course! I have pulled them out and replanted them in pots, hopefully they continue to grow.