Gardening

I love our back yard.We have large trees in the back yard that shades about two-thirds of the yard. Much of our yard is green with lush grass.

(OK, part of the yard has lush grass. The part that is most shaded is not doing as well, but Santa put the trampoline over there, so it doesn't really matter. You can't really see it anyway.)

I have always wanted to plant a garden - you know, with vegetables and such. I do not, however, really want to plow up the lush grass I have in the non-shady side of my yard. I do have a few flower beds, but nothing large enough to actually do any major gardening.

(On a side note, my parents once took in the back third of our yard, from one side of the yard to the other, for a vegetable garden. At the time, I really hated it, because I, along with my sister, was responsible for keeping the weeds out. Why do weeds never grow during the cool time of the year? Oh, I guess they do and so perhaps our weeding was simply an effort to get us to be "responsible" and "productive" during our time off during the summer? At any rate, I really am sorry I neglected to properly appreciate that garden and really wish I had that space now.)

To solve my dilemma of not having space to garden, but wanting to do so, I finally broke down and took in a little space of one of the flower gardens, but more importantly, I decided to try container gardening.

I did some research as to proper plants to purchase, and even so, may not have large enough pots, but I am going for it, just to see what happens.

Here are some of the plants in the new garden:

 While I am not a huge fan of cucumbers normally, there is something about the idea of growing your own that makes them seem more appealing. We will see if that really is the case. Most of the plants here also have a "mate" in the flower bed portion, but all of the potted plants are doing much, much better than those in the garden. I have had to build a trellis for this cucumber, and also for a tomato plant, which was nearly flattened after being brutalized by our recent 60 mph winds.

 The cucumber has actually had a couple of flowers on it at this point.

 I grow some herbs, cilantro being one that I enjoy just stepping out back on the porch for a fresh crop before cooking, so I thought I would also try jalapeno.

 Here is the Patio tomato plant (that's the name, as well as where it is growing). Please be sure to note the helpful markers produced by Grace!

And a Small Fry tomato.

I asked Jana if this counted toward my 101 list - I mean, is it growing a garden when you have simply planted something. (For those of you who know me well, you realize that yes, Jana is unfortunately subjected to many "I said I was going to do this on my 101 list, but it isn't exactly how I wrote it down, so does it count" conversations.) While she often reminds me it is simply a list and I probably have way too much time on my hands if in the midst of earthquakes & tsunamis, tornadoes, and fires I am worried about the difference between planting and harvesting, this time she pointed out that I simply wrote "101.80 - Plant a Vegetable Garden" so we shall count it!

One of the other things on my list was to grow plants from seeds that I had planted and harvested the previous year. When I went out back to plant this year's crop of vegetables, along with flowers and herbs, I realized that the basil I had planted last year had flowered and the seed pods remained in the pot. They look like this:

I took these dried flowers/pods, and crushed them up to form this:

By the way, basil, especially dried flowers and seed pods are very aromatic. I happen to like it, but the kids kept running from the room. Go figure.

I took the seeds and planted some in seed starter trays, and some I simply put in the pot that originally had the basil last year. In about a week, here was the results:

The pot outside - sorry, it is a little hard to see with all of the "broccoli" that falls from the trees in the yard.

And in the starter tray.

I also Portulaca that I had harvested last fall. I followed the same procedure with these and both the starting trays and the outside pots have sprouted, although the resulting plants are really too small to get a good picture of at this point.

So, 101.82 - Grow Plants from Harvested Seeds, "Check!"