Growing Things at Home

Me, putting out the basil seedlings.

Keeping up with both my home garden and community garden plot has been harder than I thought.  Somehow I forgot about things that really need to be done, like mowing the lawn and weeding the flowerbeds.  So here are some sort of selective shots of my home garden, and I'll ask you not to peer too closely around the edges.  As you can see, I'm getting a little large to be squatting and bending these days.  Luckily N's interest in gardening is growing with every new thing he eats from the garden, so he's been a big help.

My cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli are all doing quite well under the sheer curtain that used to cover our living room window.  (N tells me I sound pretentious when I say "brassicas", but it is a lot faster to type!)  I took the cover off last week to make sure they weren't getting too little sun, too little water, or too much heat, but I've noticed that some largish-gnat-sized bugs have been fluttering around them a lot, so I may put the cover back on.  I should point out that all of these are foods that I didn't really eat until this pregnancy, but am slobbering all over right now.  I hope I don't lose interest before they produce!

My garlic patch looks very healthy, surprisingly better than the garlic in the containers, which is a little dry around the edges.  We'll see who has the last laugh when they start developing bulbs in their respective soils, though.  There are two varieties here; the hardneck variety in the foreground was noticeably smaller when they stopped growing for the winter (Garlic Progress), but it has definitely caught up.

Overall, the garden is finally starting to look green and not too bare.  I transplanted some peppers in over the weekend, three sweet bell peppers, a chili pepper, and a "kung pao" pepper.  I decided to buy pepper seedlings this year because they take so long to get started and some creature (World's Worst...) ate my first batch.  The great thing about buying them is that you can choose a variety of plants; the bad is that it costs almost as much as if you bought seeds for all those plants and only planted one or two of each.  Almost.

I have completely abandoned the original plan for the home garden in favor of just getting things in the garden.  For example, the basil you see me transplanting above was supposed to go in after the lettuce and spinach, but frankly it was ready to be planted and I am in a hurry now that I'm so close to my due date.  So, I guess I'll put the beans in the cold frame bed once the lettuce is finished.