Out of control!

 Our garden is officially out of control!  The tomatoes are almost as tall as me!  Everything is growing beautifully but we cannot believe how big everything is.  Russell has banned me from the Miracle Grow for fear that the tomatoes will start making a canopy a top the shed. ;)

Lily and Allie have loved checking on the garden each night.  There is always something new to point out to them.  Our most recent discovery is that our 2 inch long beans appeared over night!  Can you tell how proud of the garden Lily is in the picture?!

Essentially this is the same shot minus the girls, but it shows a better shot of our peppers growing in pots alongside our raised beds.

So far our squash haven't outgrown their box, but we are just bidding our time I'm sure.

But look at this!  Our first harvest!  It is going to make some yummy zucchini bread!

Strawberries

When planning our garden I asked Lily what she would like to plant in it.  Her only request was strawberries.  Not to dissapoint her I had Russ pick up some strawberry plants when he went to the citrus sale this year.  We planted three of the plants in a Strawberry Topsy Turvy and reserved the fourth and healthiest plant for the actual garden.  Our plant in the garden has flourished and grown but has yet to produce even a single flower.  But the Topsy Turvy plants have grown a bit but immediately flowered.  Lily has enjoyed watching her strawberries grow bigger and bigger and finally turn red.  She was jumping up and down tonight as Russ picked the first strawberry.  We all shared it and it was very sour but that didn't squash Lily's enthusiasm for the fact that she had grown it.

Gardening and the Bad Mommy Award

Yup, I won that award again today.  We were working on getting the gardens setup all day.  Charlotte was inside sleeping, while Russ, Allie, and I were outside. {Don't worry I had the baby monitor with me!} For some reason it didn't even cross my mind that we would need sunscreen in 70 - 80 degree weather.  That is until I looked over at Russ and he looked more like a tomato than a man.  I quickly looked over at Allie, the fairest one of all, and sure enough she was sporting some red.  I quickly grabbed her a hat and plunked it down on her.  The good news is that she had been playing in the shade a lot of the time so her burn is mild.  So mild in fact that she hasn't complained about it at all.  Yet, that still doesn't make me feel better about forgetting.

Our humidity is on its way back and look what it does to Allie's hair!  She has the cutest fro goin' on.  See her burn on her neck, she has a little bit on her head where her hair parts too.

 

Tomato boy {aka Russell} adjusting the edging to go around our plum tree.

Allie was so cute and kept wanting to help.  She dug in with her hands while stating "Me help too!"

Little hands at work breaking up our clay soil.

Right before taking her picture Allie stated, "Me happy!"  She is a very happy child, if only she could learn to open her eyes for pictures, lol!

Grandpa gets a new home

We spent some time outside today, or as Allie calls it "sigh?" And yes she always says it at as a question.  Maybe we don't go out enough so she thinks she always has to ask if we can go.  Hmm....anyway this is what the girls did....

And this....

And this too....

And in case you can't tell what "this" is,  the girls were using Lily's scissors to cut the flowers{weeds} and put them in a chair to collect them.  On a side note Lily just recently got her scissors back from her hair cutting experience. Oh, one more side note...check out what the humidity is doing to her hair.  I keep thinking she looks like Goldilocks.

While the girls were busy romping around, I was busy giving Grandpa a new home.  When my Grandpa Price died my Grandma was given 20 something baskets of houseplants.  Grandma gave each of her kids and grandkids one of these plants.  Russ and I always name our plants and shortly after receiving our house plant we dubbed it Grandpa.  Poor grandpa has been abused by me.  If anyone knows anything about me, I kill house plants.  I can keep outdoor plants alive, but houseplants get killed alot.  I've managed to keep grandpa alive{barely} even though he's got frostbite, sunburned, and got dehydrated MANY times.  Grandpa has been with us for three years, and for about a year now he has been in desperate need of a new home.  The basket he was in was just to small for him. 

Anyway, I broke up the two plant that make up Grandpa and split them in too.  I got creeped out for awhile as I found out that a spider had been making homes in the basket.  It even crawled out to say hello.  I greeted it with my shoe.  I plopped Grandpa in to containers and Lily and Allie helped put some dirt around him.  I was so happy to get this accomplished since I've been meaning to get around it for so long.  Here is a before and after shot of Grandpa...

And one last unrelated side note.  When I received this plant I was so excited that I had got this particular one.  Why?  Because it had a marijuana plant.  See that plant on the left?  My mom had one of those plants in her house, and it grew like crazy!  She finally had to give it to my sister since it got to big for her house.  Anyway, Grandpa would always call it a marijuana plant.  So in an odd way this plant had some sentimental parts to it.  It brings back great memories of Grandpa when I look at it.

Harvest Time!

Saturday I went to a enrichment group activity. I attend the food storage group, and on Saturday they were talking about gardening. Gardening is BIG down here with the members, because you can garden YEAR ROUND. Yes you did read that right YEAR ROUND. This far south we only get one hard freeze a year, which we are usually forewarned about. With that knowledge all you have to do is cover your plants that one night, and your plants should survive. But you do have to keep in mind that you can't grow the same things in the winter as you would in the spring/fall/summer. Anyway, I went and learned a lot at the meeting. I also learned that by now we should have pulled out our tomato plants because they can't stand the humid heat, and shrivel up and die.

I timidly raised my hand and asked Brother Bond, "Well, what do I do if my tomato plant has green tomatoes on it? Do I still pull it out?" He stared at me in amazement and asked, "Is it still producing fruit? Then keep taking care of it. I can't believe yours is still alive!" Apparently my "black thumb" isn't as black as I used to think it was!

When I walked up our stairs after this meeting I looked over at our plant and noticed that we didn't have green tomatoes anymore! They were a very light yellow! Yipee, we would be having tomatoes soon! Now our poor little plant hasn't produced a ton of tomatoes but it grew another green one over the weekend. This of course is a good sign that it will continue to produce more tomatoes and if we pamper it through the summer it should knock out a lot more tomatoes in the summer.

This is what our tomato looked like before picking it today. It is somewhere around the size of a golf ball...maybe a little bigger. Number two will be ready to pick soon!Oh, you can't see it very well?! Okay here is a close up. Doesn't it look delicious?! I'll let you know how it turns out!

Our humble garden...

While shopping the "Easter Bunny" found some pots in the dollar section at Target. These were little kits for kids to grow their own plant. Lily got a tomato pot, and Allie got a flower pot. Zinnias...I think. They sat on our counter for about two weeks before I finally got around to having a family home evening on growth...or was it faith?! I can't remember, put it tied into the fact that for the activity we would be growing plants.

These pots had the coolest dirt in them. You added water to this small piece of dirt and it GREW, and GREW, and GREW. It made Lily giggle so hard! I couldn't resist video taping it...so uh this might be boring for everyone, but our family found it fascinating!

Here is the dirt and pot before planting.Lily LOVED taking care of her plant. She had the giggles the whole time we were planting it.We very carefully put our pots in our window after planting them. I let Lily water them with a spray bottle she was so careful that day and the next morning. Then disaster struck. While I was rocking Allie to sleep Lily decided her plants were thirsty. She tried to water it, but ended up knocking it off the window sill. I did my best to repot it but I just wasn't sure it would survive. Three days later Allie's zinnias started to sprout. Lily's tomatoes did not.See those sprouts?!About a week later Allie's flowers were ready to transplant. Here they are after about two weeks of being in a new pot. I think I need to break them up, and spread them out. I was scared to do that on the first transplant because there was so little dirt. They are about 5 or 6 inches tall now!This is Lily's tomato plant...but not one she started from seed. We ended up going to Walmart and buying a plant and telling Lily that it was hers. She understands now that she can only water her plant if mommy or daddy are helping. This picture was taken about a week ago. Our plant is already out the top of its cage. Things grow soooo fast here. We have blossoms on the plant as well, so we are hoping for quite a few tomatoes.We had some extra soil and a planter left over so we decided to try growing cilantro again. I've never had much luck with this herb, but I think that is because I've been trying to do it in planters. I guess we'll find out soon enough! Here are our little cilantro sprouts....about three inches in the picture. They are closer to 5 inches now. The one thing we do have to be careful with our garden is that it gets flooded when it rains. These planters sit on the edge of our balcony. The overhang of the roof ends even with the edge of our balcony. When we get our rainstorms these poor guys just get flooded with water as it runs off. More than once Russ has had to go out and pull them closer to our house. Isn't he a great guy?!