The Schell's are STILL growing!

It's time for a garden update! 

And my garden is still growing, growing, growing! Yep, you heard that right...I haven't killed everything yet!

I am so happy with my raised vegetable garden this year. The weather has been perfect down here in the desert. A little rain, lots of sun, a few cloudy humid days and everything is growing like crazy. I have tomatoes already growing on my tomato plants and my squash & zucchini have large broad leaves & blooms...I can't wait to begin harvesting!

On a small sad note: My cucumbers did not seem to want to grow. They sprouted up, grew to be about 1/2 an inch tall & them promptly died. I have since replaced them with 2 bell pepper plants, one red and one green. (Fingers crossed that they do well since they got planted a little late)

Here is what we started with about 2 1/2 weeks ago:

And here is my little garden as of this morning!

Doesn't everything look great! Hopefully I can keep everything alive when the heat begins to hit in full force within the next couple of weeks. I am thinking of having my husband create something that I can put over the top of everything to keep the 115+ degree sun from frying everything this year...I will have to talk with him to see what he can come up with.

The Schell's Are Growing!

A garden that is!!

(Had you all fooled didn't I?!?)

Just like last spring I decided to plant a garden. Last year my husband built me a raised garden bed in our back side yard for me to plant in. It really is the only way to grow a garden here in the desert...and it gives you so much more control over what you are doing! You get to fill it with the best soil and you can plant your plants much closer together, thus getting a larger harvest for a small area. I also found that weeds are practically non-existent...I barely have to pull any! It is constructed with redwood and is 8 feet long, 4 feet wide and 1 foot deep. We then ordered 1 yard of good soil from a local landscape supply company and I added a two bags of mulch from Lowe's.

This year I planted tomatoes, peas, carrots, green onions, summer squash, zucchini and cucumbers. Everything has sprouted so far and for the time being they are all doing amazing. The peas were the first to sprout and everything else followed suit quickly afterwards, with my tomato plants already starting to bloom!

I can't wait to be able to collect my first items for harvest.

 

So is anyone starting to plant yet? Are you doing a traditional garden or a raised bed?

My First Harvest

When I went out to water my little raised garden bed this evening, I noticed that I had my first tomatoes ready to harvest!

And look...right behind the first overacheivers there are more cherry tomatoes just getting ready to ripen!


My first "Big Boy" tomato is also getting ready to go onto my next salad!


And I was also glad to see these big wonderful blooms on my yellow summer squash plant...I really can't wait for these bad boys to be ready!


While there are some good things to report about my first shot at gardening in Arizona, I also had some plants that didn't make it. My peas never even came up...not a single one. And my beans all sprouted, but are just withering away. I think that I got the beans in the ground too late this year, so I will give them another try this fall after it starts to cool back down. But my basil has done well (and has went into a few meals already) and my yellow bell pepper plant is doing well and has doubled in size since planting and it is also blooming, so some peppers should start showing soon!

I am really loving this little garden...this year is a bit of an experiment to see what works and what doesn't, but I am having so much fun and that's what it's all about!

Nearly Naked Gardening

This year I finally convinced my husband to build me a raised garden bed on my side yard. He constructed it out of natural redwood and it is 8 feet long x 4 feet wide x 1 foot deep. He then went to a landscape yard and bought a garden soil mix and added some good MiracleGro garden soil to the top. We planted tomatoes, yellow bell peppers, basil, green beans, peas, carrots, yellow summer squash, zucchini and cucumbers in it and everything has been doing so good so far!

Here is my little garden just after we planted it:

And here is my "nearly naked gardener" helping mommy to water her garden:

Caleb is so cute everyday about the garden. He just loves "helping" mommy by watering it. He absolutely cracks me up because he tells me some days that he NEEDS to take his pants off to water, "it's the ONLY way to keep from getting wet mommy!" I really have to watch him though...he's pretty good about leaving puddles and thinks that making mud is the reason for watering!

And here was my garden this morning. We planted it about 4 weeks ago and I already have some growth. The only thing that hasn't come up yet are the peas...I am still hoping that they might come up!

The tomatoes have about doubled in size and each of them already have some little baby tomatoes growing on them! I can't wait for the harvesting to begin...I just love the idea of being able to eat fresh homegrown veggies. It's almost like a memorial to my grandmother (she passed away this past October on my birthday), she always had a garden each and every summer and I spent many hours with her in that garden. We would plant it together, water it together, weed it together and eat tomatoes fresh off the vine together. Just being able to do something like this is a way to pass on something that I learned from her to my son and it's like she is still here with me.