Missy's First Garden

I planted cucumber plants today from Home Depot. Hope they survive! I also have beautiful hibiscus flowers in the garden! In my butterfly garden, I have some Siberian irises.

Looking good! A few days of sunshine ☀️ makes a difference! Pete’s advice.

He also told me to use my fingers and put a trench around the tomato plants. When you water, water to soils, not the leaves. Water will fill in the trench and slowly trickle to the roots of the plant. I also put peet moss around all plants. I love how the peas wrap around the stakes! Amazing to see!

Let’s take a look at the vegetables today!

Here is an update about my vegetables. Looking so much better! Even started seeds for a couple residents at my place of employment. Pete Parrato gave me permission to use his name in my blog. He has been helping me plan my garden from the beginning. His famous words to me is “you worry too much!” The second to last photo was supposed to be my cucumbers. 😫

7 hours of weeding the butterfly garden! I had to look online to see what was a weed and what was the milkweed plant. I hope I figured it out! Here are some before and after shots!

I went hunting for furniture to put under the trellis. While I was out, I asked if they (Home depot) had a honeysuckle vine because I realized last night the plants I bought yesterday were the bushes, not the real vines! I already have a honeysuckle bush in my butterfly garden. You can see it on the right side of my garden.

I love sitting out by my butterfly garden and watching both butterflies and hummingbirds. I decided to build this trellis with my kids help. I used a 16’ cattle panel and 4- 6.5’ T posts. I purchased this from Tractor Supply in Madison, Ohio.

It took 3 of us to put this up. The posts were so tall, we pounded it in about 2 feet into the ground. I wanted to make sure I would be able to get a table and two chairs under it. Along the sides, I put honeysuckle vines.

I purchased a couple tomato plants from Walmart today. One cherry tomato plant and regular size tomato plant. Got them home to transplant into pots and place in the garden area. Took updated pics of the veggies. For the plants that had brown leaves, I now see new growth on the plant! Maybe it is taking time to acclimate to this very strange weather. One day it’s 80° to 90° and the next it’s 50°. So much rain!!!!!!

I’m getting a little discouraged with the weather and the way my vegetables are looking. Squash and zucchini leaves are turning brown. My cucumbers shriveled up and disappeared. My lettuce growing in the sunroom looks so much better than what’s outside! We have been having rain almost every other day! Not a lot of sunshine😫

I have to say, the one thing I love about Spring-time is the bright colors all around!  I have this tiny tree that has beautiful blossoms! 

Well, my vegetables are not growing as I anticipated.  With this being my first garden, I think I am a little impatient!  The leaves are turning brown on my zucchini and squash.  My cucumbers shriveled up and basically disappeared.  My patient that has been guiding me on my garden told me to stop worrying about the weather and what the plants are doing or going to be doing.  “Worrying will not help anything!”

Sugar snap peas above have always looked good from the beginning.

Cucumbers... I don’t know what happened!

Now that I have the pea pebbles down, the grass is really growing on the outside of the fence.  It is actually growing in between the fence and chicken coup wire.  It looks horrible!!

So, I spent 4.5 hours edging the inside of the fence with Vigor Composite Edging.  Two of these went around on the inside.

Now that it is all edged so the pebbles will hopefully stay inside the fence area, I took care of all the grass around it.  The grass was so wet, too much came up so I just flipped the grass for now.

The finish product I must admit was impressive.  To think I did this all by myself!

I came home from work and decided I would plant the vegetables today because it is nice outside and it is supposed to possibly rain the next few days. We have been getting crazy weather lately!

I planted the following: 1 zucchini and squash, 2 beans, 9 sugar snap peas, 14 lettuce, 2 cherry tomatoes, 2 tomatoes, 2 cucumbers, 1 sweet red pepper.  I will be planting 2 or 3 Brussel sprouts as well, however my brother told me to not plant those until the weather gets hotter.  Those are left in my sunroom.

My one single green pepper plant.