Garden Update: At Least I Didn’t Kill Anything Else

April 24, 2014 by Laurie Nguyen 23 Comments

I am hesitant to say this, but my garden is growing relatively well.  I planted several seeds early last week, and some are already blooming.  The spaghetti squash seeds?  Not yet, but I’m hoping!  Nothing has died in the past week, and everything seems to be growing as it should.  Good news, right?

 

Here are some pictures, so you can see my garden’s progress.

 

Garlic – I planted some garlic a couple of weeks ago, and it is sprouting! I think I was supposed to plant it in the fall, so it may not do well when it gets hot. We will see. I only spent 50 cents on 5 bulbs to plant, so if I get a couple of heads of garlic out of it, I will consider that a success.

 

Zucchini Squash – Flowers are getting ready to bloom, and I hope the bees come to pollinate them. I planted some lavender pretty close to this plant, and the bees seemed to LOVE the lavender at the garden center. If the bees do not come, I will try hand pollinating.

 

Eggplant – My cage and mesh seem to have worked, because my eggplant plant is growing new leaves. Hopefully it will blossom soon.

 

Tomatoes – One of my tomato plants has two little tomatoes on it and several flowers. My heirloom cherry tomato plant has quite a few flowers, which I hope will develop into delicious cherry tomatoes. My third tomato plant was put into the ground a couple of weeks after the first two. While it’s growing well, I don’t see any flowers yet.

 

Orange Tree – My orange tree has dropped some of the tiny oranges, but that’s a good thing. I may still have to thin the fruit later (remove some of it), but I’m going to wait and see what mother nature does first.

 

Onions – My onions are growing so well! I will have a ton when they are ready to harvest. I think I will try dehydrating some for longer term storage. But let’s not put the cart ahead of the horse. They’ve only been in the ground for about a month, so we’ll see how many I have at the end of the growing season.

 

Spinach – My spinach seeds are growing with the tiny plants starting to peek out of the ground. I really enjoyed my small harvest of spinach last year. Hopefully, it will be at least as good this year.

 

Radishes – The seed packet said these grow quickly (20-30 days), and I believe it. Look at the size of those plants already! I planted them the same time as the spinach seeds.

 

Peach Tree – I thinned the fruit as recommended by fruit tree experts. Hopefully, this will allow my little tree to produce beautiful, large, juicy peaches.

 

These are the peaches I pulled off the tree. Not sure what to do with them (other than possibly composting them). Anyone have any suggestions?

 

Pepper Plants – These are plants I planted last year that survived with winter. My friend, Jennette, suggested that I trim off the dead portions and see if they produce peppers. This one has a tiny bit of growth, but not much.

 

This one is doing better. It has more new growth.

 

This one is doing great! It has several flowers on the top and the bottom and one tiny pepper growing already!

 

That’s not everything in my garden, because I didn’t want to bore you with a couple dozen more pictures of plants.  I am super happy that my garden is doing well so far and that I haven’t managed to kill anything else (yet).  I’ll keep you posted throughout the year and let you know what comes of these plants.

 

How about you?  Did you plant (or are you going to plant) a garden this year?

If so, what plants will you grow?

If not, what’s stopping you?