Sunday's Secret Garden

The garden is coming along nicely. We've got bushy carrots...

If they look as good on the bottom as they do on top, we're all set. As long as we get carrots that are bigger than a pencil in thickness, I'll be happy.

The squash is blooming and sprouting baby squashes...

The bad news is there is some bug that has been burrowing inside the squash and eating it all, leaving a hollow shell. Hopefully they won't get them all! Last time we did squash, we got a fungus on the leaves. All I want is a squash!! And a cucumber...They were doing fine until yesterday. One randomly died. RIP cucumber plant. Good thing I planted a few extras a couple weeks ago.

We picked our first beans of the season yesterday!

As well as a couple peas!

Now if only we could have enough in one picking to feed more than a small child.

The tomatoes are growing but it's still a while before they'll turn red.

But I've got some bad garden news...Remember this strawberry from my last post?

Well it turned red. So I ate it. It was disgusting. I was so disappointed! It was sour and horrible so I did some internet research. We're going to transplant them into the garden as soon as the lettuce is finished being picked so the plants can have access to better soil. Maybe next year?? :(

Rock Garden Signs (Copycat Edition)

It's been about a month since we planted our garden and our vegetables are growing wonderfully! So far, the fence has been working well and our plants have remained unperturbed. I just hope they stay that way! A few weeks ago, I had seen these super cute garden rock signs by Repeat Crafter Me in a link up and had to copy them. Mine are NOWHERE near as cute as hers but they do their job! We can never remember where we planted things until they start growing and are identifiable. I did mine with acrylic paint (and even red nail polish for the tomato since I didn't have any red!) and sprayed them with polyurethane so they wouldn't run in the rain.

This squash one is my favorite.

I made a split one for spinach (left) and lettuce (right) since I didn't have enough good sized rocks. Sorry the picture isn't that great.

I'm really excited for some cucumbers! Although they're still a while away.

 

I think the carrot sign turned out rather nice, don't you?

 

Okay, so I couldn't figure out how to draw green beans.

Look how tall the peas are already!

 

Lastly we have the tomato, complete with nail polish red.

 

I'm happy summer is almost here. I'm usually not that into summer for some reason but this year I am. We've got the fountains, like this one below, turned on for a nice little water effect. I wish I had been doing my blog when we bought this fountain a few years ago. It was really ugly! You should have seen the amazing transformation my mom did with just a little bit of spray paint (okay, a lot of spray paint).

 

And the thing I'm most excited about - my strawberries! We've got berries already! This one is the biggest and it's already turning red! Soon I will be able to eat it :) NOM

 

My Secret Garden

So our garden isn't a secret but perhaps the fact that we absolutely suck at gardening is. We keep trying and trying to have a garden but every year we are defeated by the likes of groundhogs, deer, squirrels, and the occasional (squash) fungus. It's not fair! We decided that this year would be our last attempt at gardening (if we fail, we shall not try again). In our attempts to combat the creatures, we built a fence. It's about four feet high and the wire goes underground a little bit to deter the groundhogs from digging under it. We were told by our neighbors that the deer jumped their five foot tall fence so...uh oh. Maybe ours is too small? I think we'll drape some netting over top.

PLEASE NOTE: I take no responsibility for the shed behind the garden. It is not ours. We used to have vines that covered the whole back of our yard, pretty much blocking out the neighbors but they had to be cut down and now we have this lovely view.

The best garden fence I know of was my grandmothers. I could only find one (bad) picture of it. It's behind me in the swing...yes, that is a shower cap on my head. Who knows what was going through my mind? Her fence went over your head and completely covered the garden. She didn't have a single critter problem and had a wonderful garden. I miss you Nanny!

I think our biggest threat will continue to be the groundhogs. We used to never have a groundhog problem but now we've got one under that ugly shed, one under my dad's workshop, and at least one more under the front porch. We used to have dogs who ugh...'played' with the groundhogs and they wouldn't come back anymore (um because they were dead) but with our dogs in puppy heaven now, the groundhogs have regained control.

Last week we planted peas, green beans, carrots, squash, cucumbers, lettuce, and spinach. Hopefully we will have much more success than in years past. Our soil isn't that great (last year our carrots didn't get longer than about an inch and were so skinny and pathetic). But it's only been a week since planting and already the peas have sprouted!

We also have a tiny section outside the main garden from a few years ago where we planted some asparagus. This is what we have so far but I have a feeling that we'll never be able to harvest it. This section also has some mint.

We've also got some pots we're going to plant with these tomatoes.

The one thing I'm super excited about are my new strawberry pots!! I eat strawberries every day and thought it would be a good idea to try and grow my own since I buy about two little boxes of strawberries from the store every week when they're in season. We had planned on making and planting it all ourselves until we saw this at Home Depot already made. It cost $20 each so it worked out that it would have been cheaper than doing it ourselves.

And look! There's already a flower growing!

Anyone have any good gardening tips? I don't think he'll be much help keeping the bugs or critters away...