3 Limes, R2-D2, and a Pomelo

It is another beautiful day in our suburban garden. Our kale doubled in size almost overnight, and we had a giant salad with our veggies from the fridge. Today we harvested 3 itty bitty Mexican limes from our mini citrus grove. Also a co-worker brought us a giant pomelo fruit today. She has a tree in her back yard in Orange County, CA and the tree produces an endless supply of these gigantic grapefruit-like fruits. We are looking forward to getting out in the garden before the end of the weekend! Yay!

5 Veggies 6 Weeks Later

It was just 6 weeks ago that we planted the green ice lettuce, carrots, cucumber, italian kale, and yellow onion sets. These guys are very tightly packed together in our suburban garden. The lettuce has been producing and been eaten for at least 3 weeks. The carrots were very slow to emerge. The cucumber has been slow, but soon we will have a trellis and hopefully dozens of cukes. The kale is new for us, we'll have to figure out how to eat it. The onions are behind the kale. We are glad to have this much growth in just 6 weeks.

Beautiful Basil Bounty

Here is my first ever herb garden. Super-Awesome blogger Jane at http://www.flaxhill.blogspot.com/ had a blog giveaway and I was the lucky winner. Yay! Turned out to be the perfect way to fit some gardening in my day. Suburban Gardener had about 45 minutes home alone in the afternoon in between life's motions. Cleared some space in the kitchen, and put the CD up real loud starting with Mendelssohn's Nocturne. Great tune.

Opened the basil kit and found I had to mix the soil with 2 cups of water before beginning. Hmmm. How to do this? Got a big measuring cup and began. Was not as easy as it looks, but got it mixed. All-in-all it took about the whole 45 minutes to follow the instructions, mess up the kitchen, and clean up afterwards. Also got cool soaps made with lettuce and another made with tomato. When the basil grows, we'll post more photos.

Jane, Thank you for the gift and for adding some gardening to my day!!! I suggest everyone check out the awesome blogging at http://www.flaxhill.blogspot.com/

First Taste of Celery

Today was the day. The celery has become so beautiful and enormous in the Suburban Garden. Grabbed ahold and yanked it from the ground. Roots and soil are visible in the upper right corner of the photo. Also picked spinach, leaf lettuce and romaine lettuce and made an awesome salad. After months of TLC the moment arrived and we had the first taste of our first home grown celery. Let me be clear- this stuff had a strong taste, different than store celery. We made the salad with just the ingredients shown plus some avocado and dressing.
Now we have five more plants to harvest and they should all be ready within the next 10 days. So us Suburban Gardeners will be eating lots of celery.

Harvesting Broccoli From Container Garden

Well we had a nice steamy hot plate of broccoli from our Suburban Garden today. Lil Bro tried it, loved it, and ate a lot of broccoli. It's always fun to see the joy on the kids' faces about gardening. We also picked one of the onions to use in smashed potatoes, but did not get around to cooking the Oregon potatoes tonight. Success from the container garden at the Suburban Garden. Yay!!!!!!

Celery Growth Continues

Nature took good care of the garden while we were at the beach. The celery continues to grow and it has lots of stalks growing upright in the center like the store celery. Here is a close up photo. We are at the 3 and 1 half month point since we transplanted these guys. Pretty soon we can harvest the celery and start over again with another veggie.

Nature is In Charge

A couple of photos from the ocean front hotel balcony. We have beautiful weather on the coast. The Suburban Garden is on its own this week. We have the irrigation system programmed to keep the veggies happy, but it is a difficult for me to imagine the garden getting along without me tending to it. But nature is in charge this week and we are hoping for the best. We miss our garden......

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.