Thursday, June 16, 2011

Our Attempt at Gardening Part II


Well, our garden has been doing pretty well despite our total lack of knowledge on the subject!! Our first garden is actually growing things!! Not everything decided to come up, but we do have stuff growing and flourishing!!
I finally got a hoe for the garden, which really helps with the mass amount of weeding that needs to be done. Though I still have to hand-weed part of it, like the area around the watermelon and the carrots and chives are growing pretty close together, so I can't use a hoe there.
Here is a tour of our garden:

This is the only tomato plant we have left. We started out with 4 I think, and we transplanted 2 or 3 of them to a sunnier spot. and they didn't make it. I think they had some sort of bug get them before we even moved them. Since this plant was growing a little bit, I left it alone and it has gotten bigger. It isn't growing super fast, but we just put a cage on it because it is getting bigger. Hopefully I will get at least 1 tomato out of it!! It definitely doesn't get as much sun as a lot of my other plants.
Our cilantro is thriving! I have a bunch of little plants like this in the garden, and have already used it in my cooking! Exciting!! And when I water the garden, I smell the strong smell of cilantro! I love it!

Maddy's sunflower and watermelon (behind the towering sunflower) are doing really well! That sunflower gets bigger and bigger everyday!! She has had fun watering it and watching it grow! What a fun thing for little kids to get to watch a garden grow!

Those tall shoots are my chives, which are more like green onions now. They are doing well and I have used them in my cooking already as well. I love the taste of fresh green onions in dishes!
To the right is a row of carrots. I have several rows, and they are coming up nicely. When I water the garden, I'm starting to see the tops of the orange carrots, which is exciting!! They are all different sizes, not sure why, but they seem to be doing well!

And now, for our watermelon!! It is taking over! The baby watermelons are growing noticeable by the day!

The vines are taking over and are out into the yard as well. We need to prune them, as I've been told and have read, to get the biggest, best watermelon instead of a bunch of small watermelon.
Some of the first watermelon.

Little baby ones :)

Getting bigger...

They are at least double or triple this size now. I keep taking pictures of them, but the pictures quickly are not of the current size! They are really fun to watch everyday! Maddy is always asking to go outside and see them!
They are probably bigger than a softball right now. The other thing we have decided to do is to mulch the area under the watermelon to keep them from rotting on the ground (which happened to my friend's watermelon) and it also keeps down the weeds. Once the vines get going for the watermelon, it's really hard to get in there to weed, and I don't want them to choke out my plants.
So, for our first garden, I'm pretty happy! I wish more of our plants had come up, but I'm happy with how things are going, and it gives me a lot to learn from for next year!! Hopefully by the end of the season, I'll have a helpful knowledge of what to do/not do for my next garden!

4 comments:

  1. Neat! Thanks for sharing! Makes me want to plant watermelons in the future.

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  2. It's looking great! I can't wait until we have more room so I can grow watermelons, too.

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  3. Wow that's impressive and inspiring! Mmm I would love cilantro and watermelon but think it's too cold and cloudy in Seattle for that.

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  4. Katie,
    Yeah, I've heard that watermelon need lots of sunshine, lots of water, lots of room, and lots of attention. We just got lucky with watermelon this year because we are first year gardeners!! Hopefully they will keep growing!

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