My Not So Secret Garden 2010

After a mid-May planting, here's my little garden. Kept it small and simple: green beans, cucumbers, cherry & grape tomatoes and basil. Anxious to see if the tomatoes turn red on the vine this year. We had to use the old brown bag method last year because they stayed green outside. Unloaded the entire composter in the soil before planting. Hoping the first harvest is right around the corner!

Mystery Plant

Any idea what this vining wonder is in our garden? I think it grew out of seeds from our compost, similar to what Steph & Scott experienced last year directly in their compost pile.

The leaves are huge. To put it in perspective, even my size 10 feet pale (literally) in size next to it. I'm guessing some type of squash . . . we'll see!

Garden Progress - July

I don't want to jinx anything, but our garden is rocking this year. No harvest yet, but I think we're just around the corner from cucumbers and basil.


A couple lessons I've learned this year:

1) Cucumbers sprawl like crazy! I made the mistake of putting the chicken wire fence on the wrong sided of the cucumbers, and they overtook the row of lettuce. We have a handful of good looking cucumbers though, so hopefully they'll be equally as tasty.


2) Put in taller and stronger posts for snap peas. These poor guys had no more room to climb, so I had to tie some string from a tall stick to the tomato cage to give them something else to vine on. I hope they make it. They're a bit crowded, so I'll space them out better next year if they end up working.

A sunflower not quite ready to bloom. Reminded me of the XBox logo.

So excited that the sunflowers worked! These little guys can't help but make me smile. They're only about 3.5 feet tall and have a much smaller bloom than their full size cousins.

How Does My Garden Grow....Like Sow

Ahhhh Spring! We planted our garden on May 13. These pictures were taken on May 28th (happy birthday, Kelly!) With the help of our very own compost and a bag of organic garden soil, our tiny garden plot came to life.

This year we're trying:

Cherry tomatoes (1) -new!

Grape tomatoes (1) - the only tomato to turn red on the vine for us last year

Roma tomatoes (1) -new!

Cucumbers - new!

Snap Peas - had success with these last year

Green Beans - had success with these last year

Lettuce - new!

Basil - new!

Green Peppers - not very successful last year but keeping my fingers crossed

Jalapeno Peppers - new!

Sunflowers -new! I think these will be a long shot.

Cucumbers (above)

Snap Peas

Grape Tomato Plant

We condensed and moved our garden spot slightly. I love our trees, but they severely limit the sunlight in our backyard. We're taking the lessons learned over the last two summers and downsizing the space.

I placed newspaper over the bare soil spots and covered with grass clippings to deter weeds.

Happy to report everything has sprouted. The first week of April I started basil, cucumbers and sunflowers from seeds inside. They have made the transition to the great outdoors. All other plants were pre-potted.

Anyone else working their green thumbs this year? Potted gardens count too!