Here's my belated post about month 2.
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After 2 months:
I need to remember to actually water the garden. The hubby
(if you remember, the person whose idea this garden was) had foot surgery so garden tending has been handed over to yours truly. I think I'm doing pretty good. I go out at least once a day to check on the garden. The girls LOVE LOVE to go see if there are any strawberries ready to be picked, they have taken over the strawberry job. Also, they enjoy green bean picking too.
I'm really having fun with this garden thing... but I kind of slacked and didn't actually take a full garden picture this month.
What have we learned:
Picking green beans actually causes more to grow... and we should have picked them a whole lot sooner. The bush green bean plant has a maturity date of 55-60 days. While we got TONS of green beans, I had high hopes of giving some to friends and freezing a lot... but by the time we got around to that a lot of them were turning yellow and overripe. All that said, I'm quite impressed how well these did since we grew them from seeds!
We should have planted our tomato plants WAY further apart. They are so crowded we can't get in there to see if we even have tomatoes. Also, I'm afraid the crowding was encouraging bugs and fungus.
Bell Pepper plants ALL grow green and only change colors (yellow, red, orange in our garden) when they are ripe. We were a little confused when the peppers on ALL our plants were green... fingers crossed we get some to change color.
Head lettuce likes shade and will not actually form a head if it's too sunny or hot. SOOO.... that was kind of a bust. We did not get ANY yield from our head lettuce - it was "bolting" I think and shooting straight up... so we pulled that.
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| Not-so-much-of-a-head head lettuce |
Our red romaine lettuce, on the other hand, gave us quite a yield; We tried both tearing off the outside leaves and cutting the whole heart to the ground and letting it grow back. Nearing month 2, I felt like I couldn't keep up with the number of plants that we planted... and it too was beginning to shoot straight up and flower. I was told that once your lettuce flowers, it becomes bitter... so after 2 months (
and a few days) we ended up pulling the red romaine. We may try this again in the fall.
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| Red romaine |
I've also learned that me and herbs are not friends -- I can not keep those things alive to save my life. Except for mint... turns out I really have no use for mint... I am pregnant so mojitos are out of the question... and this herb grows like a weed and is trying to take over the herb section of our garden - YIKES!
This months yield:
LOTS Red Romaine Lettuce -- we had a salad at least every other day (
sometimes daily) for a month and a half
Green beans, green beans, and MORE green beans
A few green bell peppers
Some tomatoes (
that didn't get destroyed by bugs)
Strawberries every so often
And ONE onion (
which I apparently picked too soon and wrong -- which was another thing we learned!)
Stay tuned for next months update.
