Planted tomatoes & peppers

So actually before I go in to what I planted today I have to say... I have been in a conundrum. what's a girl to do when she wants to garden but will be moving in the middle of the summer?


grow in containers! :)
So what i ended up doing this afternoon was loads of back breaking work. I am exhausted! I filled tons of containers I got from my Mom and planted tomatoes and lots of peppers.









Here you can see a few of them. I can't remember what's what, but those are mostly peppers and the small one is an old dried up petunia, I'm not sure if it will live.









Here's my tomatoes. And yes I had to fill the containers, plant the maters, and then I dug holes in the beds and put the containers in. In my theorizing this will help them from getting too dried out (plus I'll mulch too) and then I can utilize my fancy shmanzy irrigation system that I put in. You can see the lines going over the maters. This way when I move, I can just pull them out.




Here is my only fully planted bed. On the far side I've got 3 different types of onions, then I have some carrots. I did have radishes but they weren't bulbing out so I pulled them and just stuck the peppers in there. All those are peppers. And way to go me for recycling - the white containers on the far right are milk jugs with the tops cut off.





And just for fun, here's one of my shady beds, you can see the peas growing in the little patch I planted. Also you can see the lone BROCCOLI which is what I thought initially was some sort of weird lettuce.








Here's my Borage that I direct seeded. I dug one of them up and put it in a container next to my strawberries and potatoes.










And here's my happily mulched strawberries and a few surviving runners in the black container. Those will go up to my parents' place.










Some more of my starts!Most of these are my melons, cucumbers and pumpkins. I don't know how many of those I will plant, but many of them will probably end up at my parents' place too. On the right there are two raspberry starts that I dug up from my friend's house. I have someone mailing me some salmonberry starts too, so we'll see if those survive!





And here is some of my other plants. Some leftover peppers & maters that I'll plant at my parents' place and you can see the grape cuttings in the back out for some sunshine.









My tropicals! They are growing like crazy.












Except my pepper vine has mites! I'm going to try smoking them out tonight and see how that goes. I'm pretty sure the mites were on it when it got here.









My vanilla orchid is growing! That green shoot at the top is brand new.











And here's one of the first citrus trees that I got - allll of that is new growth. Crazy huh! It's also setting bud for another flower... I had pulled off all the flowers when I got it because I wanted it to establish first for about 6 months but apparently it's pretty happy :)

Garden & Kids 4/25

Well you know me, I like to post pics. No real news here, just some pictures from this afternoon.

















Here's a volunteer, some sort of mint. I didn't grow any mint and there was none growing here when we moved here 2 years ago. There are two plants... I wonder if seeds got dropped by some birds? I'm tempted to dig it up because I know how invasive the stuff can be.







Another volunteer... some chives going to seed. These have been here for many years, I dug them out of the strawberry planter and then was not intending to save them, so I threw them upside down into the walkway of the garden and ignored them. They must have hibernated last year and then they came up this year with shining colors :)





I think it's some sort of cabbage but it also volunteered this year. Maybe a lettuce? Anybody have any idea?










Eleora digging up dirt in the garden.












Sophia playing with the play house. If you happen to notice the dirt around her mouth it's because I was mixing up some soil blocker mix and she must have thought it looked tasty because as soon as I turned my head she grabbed a handful and stuck it in her mouth. A lil dirt never killed anyone, right? lol... you should have seen her face, it was priceless.





Pictures of all my 5 trees happily in the corner. OH YEAH I FORGOT TO MENTION... lol. Silly ol me decided to go back to Home Depot yesterday to get the Bearss Lime and the Blood Orange trees. I just couldn't resist. Many people have problems with impulse buying but I tend to do the opposite and NOT buy things when I really should. These trees are such great quality and an excellent buy for $15 so I decided I'd get all 5 types that had caught my eye. They did also have 2 other kinds but not ones I was interested in, so now I have one of each tree that I had liked - Satsuma Mandarin, Navel orange, blood orange, Meyer lemon, and Bearss Lime (plus the two key limes I'm sprouting and all the other stuff).








Some kids suck their thumbs... Sophia does this. I don't know where she got it from but she holds her blanket like that all the time, it's funny :)









And that's all I got for the day! Just had to share :)

My new obsession - tropicals!

Ok so here's the deal. I have this thing about the supply chain... basically, it's not infallible. Things could happen. And with our economy, who knows what could happen?

And here's practical little me saying - zomg if the food chain was interrupted how would I get MANGOS or AVOCADOS??? LEMONS AND LIMES???

This thought has been ricocheting around in my brain for about a year now so gradually I have started researching growing tropical plants. Not that I really think I'd have a big crop, but hey, if bananas or pineapples were expensive or impossible to get I think it would be nice to have them once in a while. Plus, it's just COOL to grow tropicals indoors.

So here's my little collection so far! I am very proud of each of my pieces. I don't know if I will ever get fruit or anything but it is FUN to have them, I love it.

Here's a couple that are really fun! I won't get anything out of them until someday when I have a good-size greenhouse, though, but it's still a novelty. The vine on the left is a vanilla orchid. The flowers bloom for ONE DAY only and need to be hand-pollinated in order to grow a bean. Oh yeah, and it needs like 40 feet of length in order to be mature enough to flower. That's why I need a greenhouse :)




The one on the right is Piper Nigrum AKA black pepper. Somewhat easy to grow from what I've heard but also one that needs a LOT of room to climb. It's a vine so I'll basically need to get a greenhouse with a really big looping trellis. The berries grow in little clusters. What we know as black peppercorns are actually the immature green peppercorns dried. You can also make white pepper by allowing the berries to mature and removing the outer shell. Either way, they are very potent, way moreso than the black peppercorns you can buy so I am really hoping I can try them! Something a lot of people do is just crush the green berries right off the plant and use them. Lots of experimenting potential... if I just happened to have a huge greenhouse with lots of room for this vine to roam, that is ;)

Here are two of my citrus trees. I just got them a few weeks ago when I went to Home Depot with my mom and happened to naturally sorta gravitate towards the plant section. What did I see but not only a Meyer Lemon for $14.95 but also a SATSUMA mandarin! I was having a hard time finding them, and mail-order it would be hard to beat finding 4 foot trees in such great condition for only 15 bucks! So I got the two...












... and then the other day I went back and got another - a navel orange. The last one they had, too! Isn't it beautiful? Just $15, too... a steal considering what I'd pay for a tree like that shipped to me. The first two had already put on new growth in the week they were at my house so I decided to get this one. They had a few other citrus trees but those were the main ones I wanted. I might still go back for a blood orange, though, that one looked cool, but I'm running out of room on the ONE window I can keep them by :)










And this one doesn't technically count as a tropical but I forgot to blog it earlier with my starts :) These are my grape cuttings that I got earlier this year. I got 5 Thompson Seedless, about 20 Concord, and 4 each of two different wine grapes, Chardonel and one other I can't remember.

Anyway, I completely did them wrong (the Thompson and Concord, that is) so I am not expecting much of a turnout but you can see I do have SOME! The big leaf you see is the Chardonel wine grape (thanks, Gary!) and the one right behind it right on the vermiculite is a Concord (and there's one more Concord putting out a leaf but you can't see it in this pic). I know some more of the starts are still alive so I guess we'll see what the turnout is like once it's time to plant them. I hope Papa gets his tractor ready! Hopefully we'll have quite a few to plant.

Oh and honorable mentions that don't have a photo - I currently have a pineapple that is trying really hard to grow roots and two germinated key lime seeds that I have planted. Key limes do grow true to seed so I'm hoping to get some trees, although I could just swing by Home Depot and get a 4 foot lime tree for 15 bucks! lol... I am terrible. I got a choice of $50 gift card from work when I won a drawing and what did I choose? Home Depot so I could get gardening and irrigation supplies... haha I am such a nerd. Oh well. I still have about $18 left, so I could probably go get another tree. Just no place to put it.

Oh and I also have some ginger, two pots of it but no sprouts yet, those are just recently planted.

So, not bad, right? :)