Garden Progress...It's a Squashtastrophy

You'll have to forgive me for boring you, but I need to document the progress of our little out of control garden...or more accurately lack thereof.

I took this picture right before I pulled out the giant yellow squash plant on the left.  It's the biggest disappointment of the garden.  It was doing so well and had lots of flowers and then lots of little squashes and then just when I got my hopes up that this was finally my year for being the successful squash farmer I knew I would be.....they rotted.  One by one.  Each and every one.  In my expert gardening opinion based on copious amounts of internet browsing of images of rotting squashes I've concluded that I have "blossom end rot".  Which of course has only one cure and that is to enrich the soil to prevent it from happening in the first place.  Super helpful advice internet.  At least now in the absence of the mighty giant my carrots stand a chance of actually getting some sunlight.

I do have high hopes that my zucchini in the other bed will not succumb to the rot though.  Its first batch of little beautiful squash are already growing so now I just watch them every day, checking for signs of the decay that I would be powerless to stop.  Who knew gardening was so dramatic?

Tomatoes though, tomatoes we can grow.  I'm apparently allergic to pruning them, but they don't seem to mind.  This year we bought three little seedlings at the nursery that were labeled to be the most resilient to the various bugs and diseases that plague our humid home and they have turned out to be everything they promised and more.

Our basil's coming back after a vicious animal attack, our cucumber is vining up the trellis so that's promising, and we've been able to harvest three hot peppers with nary an insect hole to be found so I guess the garden isn't a total disaster.

I think when we plant our next garden after the big move (which incidentally looks like it will be DC in November--but we don't actually have orders in our hand so who knows) I'm going to go with the advice I've been reading in Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots and focus on planting more things that are fun for the kids to grow like sunflower houses and berry bushes and gourds that we can make into birdhouses.

Maybe then we can avoid another squashtastrophy........

{p,h,f,r} Spring Has Sprung Edition

{pretty}

We've been busy this week with Lenten cleaning and Easter preparations, but I did manage to put together a new wreath for our door.

I have two grapevine wreaths that I just disassemble and reassemble to make new wreaths as the seasons change, which is perfect since I hate to store/move unnecessary stuff--and yes I'm counting seasonal wreaths as necessary stuff, don't judge me.   I'd rather just use natural (i.e. free) materials but I couldn't think of a way to make a Springy wreath without flowers so I went a little crazy in the faux flower section of the craft store.  I think it turned out pretty :)

{happy}

Our garden is really thriving, and I hope this cooler weather means we'll have more time before all the pests/diseases that plague our overly humid summers have a chance to murder all of our hard work.  I'm happiest about our squash which appears to actually be bearing fruit, unlike last year when we got a whole lot of nothing.

I'm also pretty excited by our chives which we managed to keep alive throughout the entire winter which was pretty impressive for us.  I read that you can eat the flowers but so far I haven't had any takers on purple flower salad......

{funny}

This is from when we planted the garden over a month ago.  The kids were so dirty.....I mean such great helpers.  Notice the construction equipment in the back.  My children are nothing if not professional--always have the correct tools for the job we always say.......

{real}

I think Spring is officially over here.  I ran out this week to take a picture of the last of our azaleas.  It's always so sad to see them go, especially this year after the two winter frosts killed back all of our other flowering plants so they were the only thing making our flower beds not look completely scraggly.  Last year we had the azaleas going and all the other flowers blooming all at once.  Hopefully they'll recover themselves from the frost and start to flower again soon.  Ah, Florida problems :)

Make sure to see more everyday contentment over at Like Mother, Like Daughter.

Tales From Our Garden: vol 5 {Attack of the Tomato Worm}

Our poor garden has gotten a little out of control......

I've learned that I'm not a good plant pruner.  Partly because I'm not sure of the exact right way so clearly I couldn't just give it a try and see what happens, but also it always seems like I shouldn't prune because that branch might bear good fruit so clearly I shouldn't cut it off....I should let it live!

There's probably a spiritual lesson in there somewhere.

Aside from tomatoes, beans and one pepper....our garden has produced no other veggies......not even the zucchini or yellow squash which I was under the impression were impossible not to have an overabundance of.  Everything grew, everything flowered....then flowered again.....then again.....then.....nothing.  Well, not nothing; the zucchini and squash plants did shrivel up and die so that's something I suppose.  I'm not sure where we went wrong--our climate or our soil mix or my sad gardening skills, or a combination of all three?

The things that grew best are the beans, which of course are the things I like least.

And, as if it wasn't already bad enough that we have to pick our tomatoes before they are perfectly ripe to stop the raccoons from feasting on them, this week, to add insult to injury, our very best tomato plant was attacked by this horrifically disgusting worm.

He took out half the tomatoes in one day.

So we put him in a time out.

Delicious.  This was cuter when it was happening in The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

I think we are going to pull out the sad garden soon, reassess the soil and put in our "fall garden" which apparently is something you can do when you live in Florida.  Since I'm planning on doing some intensive Beatrix Potter reading with the boys for the start of David's not-really-Kindergarten-year I'm thinking carrots, lettuce, cabbage and radishes are all in order.

Hopefully we will have better luck and I can stop despairing at my total and complete lack of gardening skills and also maybe learn to prune a plant with reckless abandon.

I'll keep you posted.

Tales From Our Garden: vol. 4 {The Ladybugs Arrive.....and Depart}

We survived the great tomato blight of 2013 only to be attacked by ravenous aphids.  So we did what anyone would do and ordered 300 live ladybugs from Amazon to mount a counter attack.

Unfortunately, according to Chris, no one explained to the ladybugs their indentured servitude status and they mostly flew free without fulfilling their aphid eating duties.

On the plus side, the boys (okay, mostly David) found playing with a bag of hundreds of ladybugs to be very entertaining and I highly recommend it, aphids or no :)

Henry, who possesses about the same helpfulness level of the ladybugs, quickly stole away to wow us with his somewhat less coordinated (albeit still highly amusing) rendition of "Me Ole Bamboo".  So the evening wasn't a complete loss.....

Tales From Our Garden: vol.3 {Memorial Day Weekend Edition}

Over the three day weekend we did a little work in the garden.....the biggest excitement being these amazingly wonderful tomato cages we made out of some found bamboo and string.

The cage for the tomato plant on the left is really more the invention of wishful thinking than necessity.  That particular plant is our saddest tomato plant....but maybe just seeing his new tomato cage will inspire him to fill out to his own glorious potential.

We also did some more weekend adventuring and found the first real, teach-your-kids-the-laws-of-physics see-saws we've seen in Florida.  David loved it.  Henry was terrified........mostly of David.....combined with the laws of physics.

John Michael also had fun.......

......with me in the car.......................

......trying to take pictures of him in my lap.......

......nailed it.  

Tales From Our Garden: vol. 2, {p,h,f,r edition}

{pretty}

After the May crowning of Mary we did at mass last Sunday, the boys wanted to have a crowning of our own...and like most things they lost interest in making the crown of flowers right after they picked them, handed them to me and then realized I couldn't instantly, magically weave them into a crown......I think it turned out nicely though--even if I was abandoned in the end.......

{happy}

  

All of our seeds sprouted after all!  I'm trying to burn the memory of my happiness at being able to turn seeds into small plants so that if (or, more likely when) they fail to yield anything edible I can remember this small triumph and not be too overcome with self pity :)

{funny}

"MOM!! Take a picture with me in it too!  I'm dancing!"  Wow, okay son.....those are some excellent moves you've got going there..........

{real}

I thought my cilantro plants looked a little off when I bought them.  After further research--now is apparently not the time to be growing cilantro in Northern Florida.  Now is the time when cilantro turns "leggy," gets the crazy lacy leaves, sprouts some flowers and goes to seed.  These were already lacy when I brought them home so I've decided that I'm no longer growing cilantro--no, now I'm growing coriander seeds, because who doesn't need more home-grown coriander seeds in their lives?  Problem solved :)

In other gardening failure news--after our three day long monsoon, three of my five tomato plants seem to have all come down with some sort of tomato blight which is really......disheartening......BUT, I saw the spots, did some emergency googling, and found and ordered this:

I'm hoping it is the organic problem solving miracle it claims to be and I haven't lost all hope of delicious tomatoes in less than a month of expert gardening.  If anyone has tips on saving tomatoes from certain doom please share!

And also, I think we have snails.


Will my garden be overrun by wild cilantro if I let it go to seed?  Will all of my tomato plants succumb to the dreaded tomato blight?  Will David ever learn some less embarrassing dance moves?  Stay tuned for the answers to these burning questions and more.


P.S. The answer to that last one is probably not--especially if he continues to rely on his rhythmically challenged mother for lessons......


P.P.S.  Make sure to check out even more contentment over at Like Mother, Like Daughter

Tales From Our Garden

 Our sunflowers have sprouted......

 ......and we are well on our way to yard of the month fame.  We've been trying to spruce up the front beds with things that will grow quickly, are perennial and also don't require a lot of effort to maintain. Being perma-renters is hard, especially when you're looking at moving every two years or so, but we refuse to live with the shame of ugly flower beds hanging over our heads.  And besides I think there's intrinsic value in gardening and taking something ugly and turning it beautiful.....or in our case semi-beautiful......or maybe just less ugly......well, hopefully the next tenants will enjoy the fruits of our labor anyway.

This plumbago we planted is supposedly invasive.....to which we say, excellent--hopefully it will be as fast growing as all of the doomsayers would have us believe and will quickly fill in the holes left by the half dead azaleas we pulled out.

I totally impulsed on this lavender while we were at the nursery but it's one of my favorite things right now :)

And since we are obviously such expert gardeners we thought to ourselves, "Hey!  Since we are obviously such expert gardeners, why not put in a vegetable garden into one of our existing flower beds as per the rules and regulations from the housing office?"  So we did.

We began by clearing out the overgrown sad flower bed on the sunnier side of the house only to find that it was hiding a deep dark dirty dirty secret......

After a week of chain-sawing, axing and repeated house-shaking mallet hitting* the stump is still there--standing proud and strong albeit a little shorter behind our new vegetable patch.

While Chris was handling the stump situation, I checked out every book I could get on Florida gardening from the library and we decided to go with the square foot gardening approach since we have limited space and they say it is super easy (they being the authors and why would they lie to me?).

Here it is during the putting together phase....if you look closely you can see a lump of a stump behind the left bed and if you are still looking closely you will notice that *shocker* we made our raised beds from our never-ending supply of found wood.

We got a bunch of organic seedlings from a local nursery to start off with (because we aren't completely delusional about our gardening prowess).  The blank squares have squash and jalapeno seeds--well we hope they do--they've already been attacked by some unknown critter so we aren't exactly sure if they are still in there or not......

And here is our finished product.  I'm loving that we haven't actually done any gardening at all but it already looks so green and lovely and productive with all of our cheater plants :)

I made some super fancy plant markers....I know, I know....I should totally open up an Etsy shop to start selling these one of a kind beauties.....

We also rigged up a trellis of sorts for our tomatoes and beans to climb up.  Hopefully it holds--we figure we can always prop it up later if it turns out our tomato plants are just bursting with fruit and the trellis begins to buckle under the weight of all the tomato-y goodness.....which is, probably unlikely.......

The boys were various levels of helpful during this whole process.  David really liked planting the seeds and seedlings with me and both boys liked watering the plants with the tiny bucket I gave them which had the double benefit of keeping them busy running back and forth to fill it up and also not allowing them to flood any poor plants with water from say, the hose.  

Most of their time was spent somewhat less helpfully though, as per usual.

They got the scathingly brilliant idea to drag Chris' car into the street while our attention was otherwise occupied.  They still think they can tow the car away if they just really put their backs into it.  I wasn't about to tell them that they had zero chance of moving daddy's car anywhere with this rope looped round the bumper method--the attempt kept them busy for at least a good half hour......

Will the raccoons and/or armadillo continue to raid the garden?  Will the sunflowers grow into something other than just sprouts?  Will the boys figure out how to put daddy's car in neutral?  Stay tuned to our garden adventure to find out the answers to these and other really really important and interesting questions.

*Chris has requested that I amend this to sledge hammering not mallet hitting--apparently they are not the same thing at all and one is immeasurably less manly than the other.  My apologies :)

{p,h,f,r} Yardwork Showdown Edition

{pretty}

Henry got some seed packets in his Easter basket and we finally got around to planting them.  They aren't pretty yet but the zinnias are already sprouting so I'm hopeful!

{happy}

Happy boys planting with their daddy....as you can see by Henry's outfit, (and like pretty much all of our activities), pants are strictly optional.

{funny}

David caught a lizard and Henry looked at it in the box and declared that it really wanted to go back to its mommy and daddy and we should set it free....David was not amused when he found out it was gone.  I may have let him believe that the lizard was in fact a Houdini lizard and that it must have escaped of its own accord......

Can you find the lizard?  They change from brown to green depending on...I have no idea what....

{real}

Does anyone know what this is?  Chris has put me in charge of finding out what type of palm it is so that he can determine the proper way to care for it and what he should do about the palm babies it's growing underneath itself.

Our neighbors won yard of the month this month so Chris has taken up the challenge and is determined to bring our front beds up to snuff--which Chris will tell you are much larger and also left to us in much worse condition than the reigning champions' flower beds are/were.  Just sayin' :)

Will our sunflowers grow?  Will we win yard of the month?  Will Henry ever wear pants?  I guess you'll just have to stay tuned to my super interesting blog to find out......And I'll be sure to keep you updated on the yardwork showdown as it progresses......


For more pictures of contentment be sure to pop over to LMLD!