I'm still alive...

I know, I know. I fell of the face of the earth again. Apparently I'm not very good at this blogging thing =/

I asked this before, but I'm going to ask again. What are some vegetables that I can grow through the winter? It's just starting to get really cold here but I'm really missing gardening in the summer!

Still not much is happening...

The cucumbers as well as the tomatoes and red peppers are flowing in like no one's business...But everything else is on a halt. I think that those three things might be it for the summer; nothing else seems to want to produce! Except maybe the string beans...But we'll have to see about those!

Here are some pickles me and my mom made: 

They're more on the sweet side, and I don't really like sweet pickles, so we're going to try a dill recipe as well. They're a huge hit in our house though, everyone else who has tried them loves them! 

Here are some of the tomatoes:

A squirrel (or some kind of stinker) keeps going after the roma tomatoes! We've only lost two so far, but they were pretty low on the plant, so I'm hoping we don't lose many more...The roma ones are my favorite. The pear ones are good, but a bit sour for my liking, and the plum tomatoes (the two pictured behind the roma in the front are our first ones!) are a bit bland compared to the roma. They're still good with some salt and pepper though!

And here's a little bug that I found up in the front yard near the flower bed that I thought was cool!:

I've never seen a bug like that before! I especially like it's colors :)

Well that's pretty much it...Sadly I don't have much else to post about. But so I have some material for the fall, what are some good vegetables to grow in the fall in the Pennsylvania area?

Thanks for reading!

--Seana

Long time no update...

So obviously, I haven't updated this in over a month...What happened was that we had a really bad flood here a couple weeks ago. The water was over three feet high in my yard and I assumed everything was gone. That didn't turn out to be the case, but there were plenty of other things to worry about with the flood that honestly, I kind of left the garden abandoned. Everything in my basement, shed and garage was destroyed.

My rabbits (who were living outside) almost drowned, so finding somewhere else to put them has been a challenge.

There has been a lot going on so I've just been doing the bare minimum with the garden every day.

When I first went out to really examine it and see the damage done, I was actually really surprised. The tomato cages had completely fallen over, but they were fine. No branches broke, there were no rotten tomatoes. They were all good. We picked them back up, hosed them off and now they're all fine. The bell peppers, as well as the red hot chili pepper plant, which were completely submerged under water for nearly an hour, are both fine as well. The red hot chili pepper plant has already given us lots of little peppers! The bell peppers are getting close. The cucumber were completely unharmed.

Now, all of those plants were ones that were big and well established. The smaller ones didn't do so well. The leaf lettuce was barely growing anyway because of the wild rabbits, so that's gone. The peas are also not going to survive out there. The string beans are surprisingly okay, they just need to be thinned out. The corn is doing great. The broccoli is doing pretty well too, both of them need to be thinned as well. The mild jalapenos haven't showed any progress, but they're still alive. The carrots never really sprouted much, but the ones that did are still fine out there. The watermelons are dying to get into the ground (no they still haven't) and if it isn't too late (which I'm sure it is), we're going to plant them ASAP.

We are setting aside a day to completely weed the whole thing. The weeds have nearly taken over the garden. We are also going to thin everything out, even though it's incredible late for that. We're at least going to try and salvage anything we can.

Today when I went out though, I found lots to grab:

We got a bunch of cucumbers (some which are way overgrown), four red hot chili peppers, a roma tomato, and a little pear tomato! The tomatoes are doing really well, so that's good. I'm going to try to get back on track with posting on here once everything out there is situated, which will most likely be within the next few days. 

Well thanks for reading!

--Seana

New seeds planted!

Me and my mom did quite a bit in the garden today! We still have more to do but we're saving that for tomorrow. Unfortunately, we had to plant a lot of seeds really late because we had no where to put them, but today, we planted corn, broccoli, carrots and we moved some mild jalepenos that we have growing in pots into the ground.

Here is the corn:

And here are the peppers we moved:

The other stuff we planted was too small to photograph.

But aside from that, we also weeded (is that a word?) EVERYTHING. There are now tomatoes on all three plants, which I didn't get to take pictures of because I didn't have my phone of my camera on me at the time. The bell peppers are moving slowly but surely. There are two little tiny babies on there. The red hot chili peppers are going crazy. They're big enough now, we're just waiting for them to turn red. 

The leaf lettuce is ready to be thinned out, which is going to be done tomorrow, along with planting cauliflower, some more onions, strawberries, and asparagus. We're also putting the watermelon plants in the ground tomorrow. The green beans and peas seem to be doing fine. The remaining iceberg is doing okay too, but we're going to plant some more tomorrow to make up for the ones we lost from the rain. 

The cucumbers are growing like crazy. We've already pulled four and eaten them in the last three days, and we pulled quite a few to make pickles with last night. We're going to be making them tomorrow, also. So we've still got plenty to do, but the garden is coming along nicely! I guess that's all for now!

--Seana

First cucumber! :)

Me and my mom pulled the first cucumber today! I wanted to wait a few more days but I just couldn't :)

It tasted like I figured it would; like a cucumber! At first I felt like something was missing; it didn't taste exactly like they did when we buy them at the store. But it wasn't chilled because I was too excited to wait :) So I stuck it in the fridge and surely, a couple hours later it tasted just like a real cucumber! Well, it IS a real cucumber :)

It was so exciting! I had everyone in the house try it. It was the first thing either me or my mom have ever grown from seed that we've eaten. It's kind of amazing :) We're pulling another one tomorrow because this one was gone quickly after the photos were taken :) There are a couple more out there that are probably big enough but we want them to grow a little longer first. Now I just need to figure out what to do with them all!

We know we're making pickles with some, cucumber salad with some, using some with regular salad, and eating some raw, but we're going to have cucumbers growing out of our ears! Does anyone have some good recipes involving cucumbers?

Ps. Why does my cucumber have those white dots where the prickles were? Is that okay to eat? I hope that doesn't mean I picked them too soon...Oops!

Well, that's all for today! :)

--Seana

Rain Rain Go Away :(

Hi everyone. Yesterday we had some really bad storms here. They ended up flooding the iceberg lettuce and quite a bit of it died :( I'm hoping the rest will be okay the next time it rains. It didn't hurt much else though. They were the smallest things in the garden; they'd just began to sprout. 

On a happier note though, I have a bunch to update on. Pretty much everything in the garden has made progress since the last time I posted. The bell pepper hasn't done much, but there is another flower:

But none of the other plants have flowers yet =/

The cucumbers are getting big still:

I'm guessing in just a couple more days, it will be the size I want! :) For the last week or so, we've been noticing that our cucumber plants are growing into our neighbors yard. She said she wouldn't mind but the guy who does her lawn might cut them off, so I figured we should probably move them back so they were only up against our fence. I did about half of them, but sadly I accidentally broke quite a few tendrils that were wrapped around the fence. I hope I didn't do too much damage =/ 

I also found this really weird bug on one of the stems:

It looks like one of those wishy flowers! It was so fuzzy that I couldn't even believe it was a bug...I'm thinking it's some kind of caterpillar because of they way it moved. I didn't move it, which was probably a terrible idea, but I HATE caterpillars. Just taking this picture made me cringe. I definitely didn't want to touch it. I'm going to do some research and if it's harmful to the plants, I'll find someone else to remove it. Does anyone else know what it could be?

The leaf lettuce is really shaping up! It's actually starting to look like lettuce:

So that's exciting.

The peas are all up too:

They're doing well. 

As well as the green beans:

I'm actually surprised at how big they are by now!

The red hot chili peppers are also doing well. These are the two biggest ones:

 But there are a bunch of those all over :)

And last but not least!:

3 little baby tomatoes! I was so worried that these weren't going to do anything and then these little guys showed up! These are the beefsteak; the others don't have any tomatoes yet. But they DO have flowers! 

Well, I think that's it. I need to work on making these posts a little shorter :) Sorry!

--Seana

A bunch of progress :)

I've been away from my garden for two days and I feel like I've been away for weeks! My mom has been watering it and everything, but usually I'm the one to keep track on progress of the plants so when I went out this morning, I was very happy and surprised with all the progress I found!

First of all, four more of the watermelon seeds are up (only two new ones pictured; the others are in different pots):

The one to the far right is the one I posted about a couple days ago. It's gotten really big already so that's exciting.

The iceberg lettuce has already sprouted:

Along with a bunch of new weeds that you can see in the bottom right corner =/ But the lettuce is exciting!

As well as that, the leaf lettuce is not only getting bigger, but there's a TON of it now:

So that's always fun :)

Also, VERY excitingly, in the two days I was gone, one of the bell pepper plants grew a flower AND lost it, and now the first bell pepper is growing!:

Maybe I should go away more often ;)

There are a whole bunch of red hot chili peppers now:

I can't wait to taste these guys :)

And last but not least:

This cucumber has gotten huge. Probably about the size of an average dill pickle.There's another one about this size on the same plant, and then the rest of them are about the size that this one was when I first posted about it, which is still pretty big! I'm really excited for these, and I cannot WAIT to taste this cucumber as soon as it's ready to be pulled! (Which should be soon, judging by how fast it's grown already!)

The tomatoes also have a bunch of new flowers. No tomatoes yet though :( That's okay though. They'll be here soon enough. I saw a couple little sprouts starting to come up in the peas and string beans but they aren't all the way out yet! Well, I think that's it for now!

--Seana

Quick Update

Hello! This is a quick update on some of the recently planted seeds!

The leaf lettuce has already shown itself in just a couple days (hard to see): 

There are a bunch of little baby lettuce sprouts :)

Also, I noticed the first watermelon seed sprouted today as well!:

It's hard to tell tell in the picture, but two days ago I noticed a green film kinda thing over the soil...Does anyone have a clue what that could be? I'm assuming it's some kind of mold or mildew...And hoping that it won't have any effect on the watermelon once it's planted in the ground...

Monster cucumber is continuing to grow ginormous:

I'm really excited for him :)

Well, that's all!

--Seana

New seeds planted & a pepper update!

Hello, hello :)

We planted some new seeds/roots today, so I figured I'd share!

First of all, we planted three strawberry roots in this window pot:

We have a few more to plant but we're not sure where were putting them yet.

We also planted peas: 

Green beans:

And Iceberg Lettuce:

They should all be germinated within the next two weeks, so we'll definitely be looking out for that. Also, we're going to look into mulching to stop the weeds. (Thanks for that suggestion, Robin!)

On another quick little note; look at all the baby peppers! (They're kind of hard to see...):

I'm so excited for these :)

The tomatoes have flowers and the bell peppers have blossoms, but sadly, they haven't been doing much lately. I know a lot of tomatoes don't come out until later in the summer, but does anyone know how long bell peppers are supposed to take?

Well, that's all for today :)

--Seana

Quick Cucumber Update

Hiii!

This is just going to be a bit of an update on the cucumbers really quick. Today I took my cat Cosmo outside, (this is him):

And while he was out exploring the yard, I went back to the garden to check on all the plants. I was very surprised with one of the cucumbers I found!

This is the size of most of the cucumbers at the moment:

They're all still fairly small right now. However, when I was helping some of the tendrils wrap around the fence, I noticed this monster!:

It's HUGE compared to the rest of them! I was really excited about it so I just figured I'd share :)

The rest of the plants are doing well, too. There are a TON of little tiny baby green peppers popping out all over the Red Hot Chili Pepper Plant, along with the two big ones I posted about here. I'm going to assume at least a couple will be ready to pull by the end of June. 

Well, that's all for now!

-Seana

Lettuce & An Update

Hello all :) Today, my mom and I planted some leaf lettuce in the garden. First things first, we certainly don't have a lot of room like I've mentioned, but our next door neighbor has a little garden fence in her yard, shaped to an octagon with lettuce inside so we decided to try :)

We bought these seeds from Walmart:

There were tons of weeds to be destroyed first (our dog Sam helped, he loves to dig!):

And then we planted about half the pack, and this is what we came up with!:

It's a small area, and we wanted to plant it on raised ground, but we didn't really have another choice. The seedlings are supposed to emerge in 7-10 days, so we're definitely keeping an eye out for that...Plus hoping we don't confuse them with weeds =/

In some other news, we pulled our first green onions today!:

 

It may have been a bit early but my mom was making an Asian dish for dinner that called for them so we figured we'd pull some. I didn't try it because I don't like Asian food, but everyone else said it was great, so I guess that was a success :)

-Seana

Introduction to my garden :)

Like I've stated, we don't have much room in our yard. But here's a little look into what we've come up with.

We have three cages of tomatoes; Roma, Pear, and Beef Steak:


We bought these at a plant sale when they were teeny tiny. They've gotten pretty big since then. You can't tell in this picture, but there are flowers on all three plants. They probably aren't spaced far enough, but like I said, we don't have much room, and they're doing fine :)


Next is our one lonely Red Hot Chili Pepper plant:




I found this little tiny pathetic looking plant at Walmart while looking for garden fences...I wasn't planning on buying any plants there, but this was about the only one there that wasn't dead and I kind of felt bad for it. It's bigger now, with two peppers already growing and plenty of little flowers blooming :) If anyone knows how big they should be before I pull them, let me know :)


These are some onions that we planted from bulbs:

There weren't a lot, so we just placed them around in the garden. We realize now that this probably wasn't the best idea because while some are doing pretty good, there are some that are looking pretty sad :( Next time we plant them, we're going to plant them all in one section with equal amounts of sun.


We also bought three bell pepper plants from that plant sale I mentioned:


Here's one of them. They haven't made a ton of progress but there are a couple buds on them. As you can probably tell, the garden needs to be weeded in that area pretty badly so I'm going to get to that shortly. (Even though I did it just a few days ago!) You can also see a few onions that aren't doing too well :( Not far enough in the ground is my guess.


And last but not least (that's made enough progress to post about), cucumbers!:

These guys are the most exciting to me because we planted them from seed. Now they have little baby cucumbers on them! And they're so cute :)

The flowers are really pretty too:


This is the only thing I'm worried about:


Is it a cucumber disease? It's only on some of the leaves...Could it possibly just be too much water or something? I don't know, but it's worrying me. It's not like, fuzzy or anything, it's just discoloration. There aren't any holes. I'm really hoping they're okay :(

Other than that, they're training up the fence nicely:


There are about half of the plants pictured, there are more to the right. (You can also see the onions! Sadly they aren't the very good ones and it probably wasn't very smart to plant them so close to the cucumbers...) The first cucumber plant is especially tall, but the rest of them are coming along nicely too! Mostly all of them have flowers by now. It's very exciting :)

We have some mild jalepenos in pots, as well as some kiwis from a fruit that may not actually bear fruit, but we figured it's worth a shot to try. We planted some watermelons yesterday and they should be visible in about a week :) We also have plenty more seeds to plant, even though it's a little bit late in the season.

Well, that's our garden so far!

--Seana