Orange and Lemon Blossoms

Today could only spare a few minutes for the garden. Boo... Watered the 23 vegetable containers in the morning. In the afternoon snapped some quick photos of the Washington navel blossoms and the Improved meyer lemon blossoms. Both trees are dwarf grafts. The lemon tree keeps us stocked with a lemon a day. It is useful to add to H2O for a refreshing drink. The Navel tree produced just one fruit last year which was very tasty. It's only been planted here for a year and a half, but now the Washington navel has around 24 blossoms. That is my brief moment of gardening today. So glad the trees are happy.

2 Potted Peppers

The original potted pepper has been joined by another. Now we have a big bertha bell pepper and a sweet green bell. They both are slowly growing and trying to sprout little buds.

In the regular garden, somebody completely munched the new zuchinni plant. Could have been snails. They took off one leaf per day, and then finally the whole stem. Gotta find a way to protect the next zuchinni from becoming snail food....

For the Little Gardener

While Dad was working the soil, removing rocks and roots, Lil Bro was out helping in the suburban garden. Next to the Early girl tomato and spinach seedlings, Lil Bro planted a rocket, a lego space dude's head, and various pots. When you have help like this, what can you say?

Here is a close up of one spinach seedling. And of course the lego space dude's head in the pot and his rocket. The best part was the glee and excitement he expressed for gardening. Thanks son!!!

Patch Work In Progress

We made some progress in the garden which is always a treat. The broccoli and carrots were delicious. Steamed broccoli and carrot juice. Um Umm. The plant material was cut in small pieces with the hand pruner and is now in the active compost bin.

Next step is to turn the soil, sift out the rocks and grubs, and ammend with compost. You can see our tools here. In the suburban garden, we are slowly turning the awful rocky soil into awesome fertile soil. But it takes a lot of time.

With such a small garden space it's no wonder that we've taken up container gardening too.

Hope your weekend was happy!!

Next Patch To Work

The broccoli and carrots in this section of the garden are coming out this weekend. The new early girl tomato (baby) is visible on the right side of the picture with tiny spinach sprouts between the tomato and the brick. This patch will soon be home to some green beans. You can see how crowded the garden gets. Suburban Gardener wants to make the most of every inch.

Celery in the Garden

The celery is starting to gain size with our recent sunny weather. When we saw celery at the nusery, we had to have it. But then we read that it is hard to grow. It had a very slow growth at first, but we try to give it plenty of water, and right now it is looking happy. Hope it tastes yummy too!

6 Broccoli Containers

The broccoli is growing more and more each day. They have come a long way since we planted the tiny baby plants a month ago. We harvested some of the broccoli from the plants in the ground and boy was it tasty. Looking forward to eating these too.

The Potato Ranch Update

Very nice progress at the potato ranch as you can see. We are planting one row of containers per month. Hoping the harvest will stretch out over several months also. Everyone can do this.

Plants Planted in the Spring Garden

Just a note for future reference:

March 7th
Green ice lettuce seeds
Italian kale - Nero Toscana seeds
Yellow onion sets
Misc. carrot seeds
Nantes half long carrot seeds
Straight eight cucumber baby transplant

March 8th
Spinach seeds
Early girl tomato baby transplant

March 12th
Mortgage lifter heirloom tomato transplant

March 14th
Dark green zucchini squash baby transplant

Tomato Move Update

Well, the little tomato that unexpectedly emerged in the carrot patch this winter seems to have survived the move. He is standing tall next to the much larger tomato plant which also grew all by himself. As you can see, the carrot patch now has 6 little romaine lettuce plants and there are 2 rows of miscellaneous carrot seeds in the wet section in front of the tomatoes. Isnt' gardening rewarding?

Lemons, Lime + Tangerine

Today's harvest is a wee bit of fruit. Itty bitty Mexican Lime, a tiny Page Tangerine, and two Improved Meyer Lemons. These all came from the mini citrus grove situated next to the veggie garden. Isn't growing your own fruit and veggies great??

Nice Veggies

Today we got our first broccoli. It's hiding on top of the carrots. Very exciting!!!

Picked enough veggies for a nice little salad and will juice the carrots later.

Tomato Plant Move Project

Over the weekend we harvested a whole section of carrots. Yum. Then had to deal with the 2 tomato plants that grew by themselves among the carrots. The tomato plant in the front corner was way too close to the edge for comfort so we took a chance and moved it back near the other natural plant. Planning to build a cage around both plants and have them merge into one gigantic mega plant. The transplant was hard on the plant, but after one day the plant sprung back to life and is looking ready to grow! Yay!