We Have Beans!

I am very excited to announce I have beans to eat from my garden. I plan to make sesame seed beans, yum! Now for sad news my tomatoes have developed a fungus and I have had to throw out my whole crop so far about 2 dozen tomatoes. I am so sad about this and it is such a waste. The good news is I took one of the tomatoes into a local greenhouse and they gave me a fungicide that will hopefully kill off the fungus (it’s organic and safe for edible foods) and allow any tomatoes that have not yet formed to be ok. It is awful to see all these delicious tomatoes one day and they next they have all these bruises on them almost like they got beat up. I have been anxiously awaiting my cayenne peppers to turn red and they just kept staying green. Some of them started to looked like they were about to be overripe so I Googled cayenne peppers and discovered they come in green too oops. Good thing I looked it up or I would have lost a lot of peppers too. I am drying the first batch and plan on grinding them up with my new mortar & pestle. I can’t wait to try fresh ground cayenne pepper since I cook with it all the time. I put them in the oven on low temp for about 30 minutes and now I am going to string them up to finish drying. So how are your gardens doing? I hope no one else has this awful tomato fungus!

Watch My Garden Grow…

I am so excited today I planted my garden. We are in a new house this year so I have a little bit more space in some ways yet less in others so I added some new plants and am not doing some others. I am sticking to keeping my herbs in a pot because it works well plus then I can easily bring them inside in the Fall to make them last a bit longer. I found lots of vegetable plants for $1 at Marc’s and some other great prices at KMart. I don’t start from seeds because I have no where to do it indoors. Since I find my vegetable plants for so cheap they still more than pay for themselves. I do tend to overcrowd my plants and plant them closer than the directions say but I have never had a plant fail on me so I pack them in. This garden has Early Girl tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, Cayenne pepper, red and green bell peppers, jalapenos, banana peppers and garlic. I still need to add a few more marigolds to keep bugs and predators out.

This second patch is my experiment area where everything is new. I have onions, sweet potatoes and one strawberry plant just for fun. I did not do peas or green beans this year because I do not have a fence area for them to climb. Since we are just temporarily in this house I am using the garden beds that the previous people dug out and not doing anything else so I have to work with what I have. I need to buy more netting to put up since we ran out.

And of course my herb pot had Cilantro, Italian Oregano, Rosemary and Parsley. My silver Thyme is in it’s own pot and is 4 years old it just keep coming back bigger and better each year.

As you can see my plants look a little beaten up form planting and watering, but they will be huge very soon. I am so excited about trying garlic and onions this year, I cook with them so much I hope to have a great crop. Are you planting a garden, I would love to hear about it!

Garden Update

I realized I had promised garden updates and haven’t given any. The garden is going really well, nothing yet but my plants are definitely taking off. This year I added kale which is really doing well, I am very excited to cook with it I have a fantastic soup recipe that calls for kale. I also tried green beans and peas for the first time and started them from seeds. The peas are out of control and way too overcrowded ( I didn’t really believe they would all grow) and the green beans didn’t all grow and are quite sad. Oh well I am excited for both.

This year I have had my first pest issue and slugs have been eating my green beans. I have been spraying with cayenne pepper water but it is not working due to all the rain so I am planning on buying some organic grub stuff I found out about. I will let you know how it works. I planted most of my herbs in one giant pot which is pretty to look at. I was hoping to do a strawberry pot but just too expensive. So here are a few pictures of the gardens, oh and I have tomatoes and peppers of course! I would love to see/ hear how your gardening adventures are going. I am no pro as you can tell and love seeing others for inspiration.