Green Onions

Did you know that if you stick green onions in water after cutting the usable part off, they will continue to grow?

How cool is this!??!

You can also just plant it in the dirt outside and have a continuous supply of green onion! Woo! (Of course, I neglected to get a picture of this...)

My First Garden

I have never been very good at growing things. I think I have a tendency to "over" love plants - I fuss over them too much - giving them too much water, over pruning...and many plants have gone to plant heaven thanks to me.

*sigh*

But for the past year, I have been dreaming of being able to grow our own food. We have a little side yard that was just PERFECT for gardening, and I was determined to get something growing in there. So during the first weekend in February, I took the leap. I ordered a raised bed garden from Home Depot and planted tomatoes, basil, lettuce, and garlic. I started them all from seedlings, with the exception of the garlic. I bought the pack of garlic starters, but they all died, so I ended up just sticking cloves of garlic from Sprouts in the ground, and they grew! had no idea what I was doing, and no idea what varieties of plants to pick, so I grabbed what looked good. Here are the plants I ended up with:

Jet Star Tomato Hybrid (1)
Roma Tomato (2)
Sweet Basil (1)
Romaine Lettuce (8 - two didn't make it, so I had 6)
Sprouts Garlic

I also seeded a pack of basil seeds, which the neighborhood cat insisted on digging up every day, so they barely grew. I could go on and on about my hatred of this cat....but this is not an "I hate cats" blog!

Lettuce
First up, the lettuce. It grew so nicely and was delicious! Look how pretty...<insert oohs and ahhs> This was taken in March.

Romaine Lettuce, March 2012

First Harvest, March 11, 2012

My lettuce success lasted about two months. After that, it just got too hot and the lettuce was starting to look a little haggard...

Lettuce in the heat, April 21, 2012

 So I ended up harvesting the rest of the lettuce and freed up nearly half the raised bed to plant! :)

Last Lettuce harvest of Spring 2012 - April 22, 2012

Tomatoes

I actually now have four tomato plants. The Jet Star and two Romas are in the raised bed, and then I have a Celebrity Hybrid growing in a container.

First Tomato of the season - Jetstar, March 26, 2012

Same tomato, about a month later...now joined by bunches of little friends!

When I checked this morning, this tomato has started to ripen and change color...super excited!!

In writing this, I have realized that I need to take more pictures! Will be back later with more!