Ok, technically this will be the 3rd AND 4th months post... because time got away from me with the end of school and vacation and I never got around to writing it.

Last month we tore out the depleted green bean plants and quite woodsy lettuce plants and planted black beans, more green beans, a few sun flowers (the girls begged us!), cucumber that we started from seed in those little starter cups and zucchini that we started from seed directly into the garden bed... and some flower seeds that Charlotte got from her teacher in school.

After a short time, everything seemed to be sprouting and growing well...


We pulled ALL the onions...


Picked most of the carrots -- but they were hidden by our extremely overgrown tomato plants so they didn't fare overly well... but still... kind of fun! Our tomatoes have been hit with a few rounds of bug issues and fungus... but after some seven dust and some other organic spray for the fungus... they continue to produce. We've gotten at least 2 red, yellow, and orange... and lots of green bell peppers.


AND THEN the girls and I went on a 2 week road trip and between heat (gotta love Florida summer... and the direct sun), lack of attention by someone who shall not be named (ahem, ahem), or something... we lost our cucumbers AND zucchini, our tomato plants exploded and were bug filled, and we lost several belle peppers to the bugs.

Lost cucumbers and zucchini

On the bright side, we still have some peppers growing...


  The green beans are producing ...


The tomatoes are still coming in...


And Charlotte's flowers from school are doing great.

Oh... and our sunflowers are ginormous!!!


Here is the current garden.

Here's my belated post about month 2.
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After 2 months:
I need to remember to actually water the garden. The hubby (if you remember, the person whose idea this garden was) had foot surgery so garden tending has been handed over to yours truly. I think I'm doing pretty good. I go out at least once a day to check on the garden. The girls LOVE LOVE to go see if there are any strawberries ready to be picked, they have taken over the strawberry job. Also, they enjoy green bean picking too.

I'm really having fun with this garden thing... but I kind of slacked and didn't actually take a full garden picture this month.

What have we learned:
Picking green beans actually causes more to grow... and we should have picked them a whole lot sooner.  The bush green bean plant has a maturity date of 55-60 days. While we got TONS of green beans, I had high hopes of giving some to friends and freezing a lot... but by the time we got around to that a lot of them were turning yellow and overripe.  All that said, I'm quite impressed how well these did since we grew them from seeds!

We should have planted our tomato plants WAY further apart. They are so crowded we can't get in there to see if we even have tomatoes. Also, I'm afraid the crowding was encouraging bugs and fungus.

Bell Pepper plants ALL grow green and only change colors (yellow, red, orange in our garden) when they are ripe. We were a little confused when the peppers on ALL our plants were green... fingers crossed we get some to change color.

Head lettuce likes shade and will not actually form a head if it's too sunny or hot. SOOO.... that was kind of a bust. We did not get ANY yield from our head lettuce - it was "bolting" I think and shooting straight up... so we pulled that.

Not-so-much-of-a-head head lettuce

Our red romaine lettuce, on the other hand, gave us quite a yield; We tried both tearing off the outside leaves and cutting the whole heart to the ground and letting it grow back. Nearing month 2, I felt like I couldn't keep up with the number of plants that we planted... and it too was beginning to shoot straight up and flower. I was told that once your lettuce flowers, it becomes bitter... so after 2 months (and a few days) we ended up pulling the red romaine. We may try this again in the fall.

Red romaine

I've also learned that me and herbs are not friends -- I can not keep those things alive to save my life. Except for mint... turns out I really have no use for mint... I am pregnant so mojitos are out of the question... and this herb grows like a weed and is trying to take over the herb section of our garden - YIKES!

This months yield:

LOTS Red Romaine Lettuce -- we had a salad at least every other day (sometimes daily) for a month and a half
Green beans, green beans, and MORE green beans

A few green bell peppers
Some tomatoes (that didn't get destroyed by bugs)
Strawberries every so often
And ONE onion (which I apparently picked too soon and wrong -- which was another thing we learned!)

Stay tuned for next months update.

Last year we attempted to have  a garden in our backyard, and it started out so nice (see here). We even got our green beans to start to sprout from seeds, yay (see here)!! AND THEN we got one of our famous heavy rains, realized that ALL the water drains to that corner of our yard and the ground got so saturated that water literally oozed around my foot if I stepped into the garden; and then the sun scorched everything. Good bye garden 2014 (I stopped taking pictures so there is no evidence of this).

Hubby still really wanted a garden, and we had a "wild garden" (aka weeds) growing in this certain square of our yard, so for 2015, we are trying a raised garden bed. So after hubby built the garden bed and filled it with dirt, we put everyone to work.

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The Garden: Day 1


What is in our garden:




After 1 month:
 It's going pretty good I think!! Fingers crossed; like I've said before... I do not have a green thumb. I'm just the day-time weeder and monitor... unless I forget.




What have we learned: With our first successful (so far) garden, I'm sure there are going to be a LOT of lessons learned
- When head lettuce says it needs 10-12 inches... it really means that. The hubs takes that information as "suggestion". I think we will need to remove some of our plants otherwise we may get some rot.

Super crowded head lettuce

- It was recommended to us to put the strawberry plants in between our tomato plants; but by now the tomato plants have exploded and block out the sun from our poor strawberries... so we moved the strawberries to a separate container.

Tomatoes

Strawberries in pot

- We are still trying to figure out if our bush (green) beans require the supports that hubby made... mother-in-law says no... hubby isn't sure.

This months yield:
- A couple of strawberries
- A WHOLE lot of basil
- Some red romaine lettuce for several nightly salads and a couple of sandwiches
- No ripe tomatoes yet, but we got quite a few starting

I mentioned in my Mother's day Post last week that we put in a garden...

Well I am excited to announce that my green beans have started to sprout. Hurray!




We planted zucchini squash, a few different types of tomatoes, green beans, some herbs, and marigolds around the outside (which, as I'm told, will help keep the bugs away!)

Now, I am admitting it now, I do NOT have a green thumb, so send your well wishes my way that I can keep this small garden going!