Garden update from aug-sept

I planted the watermelon seeds on a whim last May. This plant has done the best out of everything! We have picked about 5 watermelons so far and we have a few more that aren't quite ready yet. We also picked a couple that weren't ripe yet! I am so happy that we actually grew watermelons! All was doing well until the plant was taken over by an army of spider mites. They killed most of the plant but our watermelons are still hanging on!

The plant turned a nasty spotted brown.

Here's a watermelon hanging down into our window well. We have a nice view of it from our basement 😊.

These watermelons are medium sized, which I am grateful for. We wouldn't have had enough room for anything bigger! I am not sure if we will plant them next year, since they depleted the soil but maybe the year after!

The garden boxes were hit and miss this year. Our tomatoes are finally starting to grow, very late. The zuchini plants I planted by seeds were also late bloomers but they're doing great now! The peas are also still producing but I'm letting them dry out so I can collect the seeds.

Our blackberry and raspberry plants have grown a lot! We already need to make a trellis for them. They're currently flopped over on the ground. They have sprouted some new canes as well. I'm very excited to see if they produce next summer.

The sweet potatoes are doing well! They are still not ready to harvest. I believe they're ready when their leaves turn more yellow/light green. And there's our happy mum too!

The strawberry bare roots we planted have thrived for the most part. A couple plants died but the rest will probably produce next summer!

  

I'm honestly not sure what is going on with our pumpkin plant. All I know is that we don't have any yet! We keep getting small green ones and then they dry up and fall off. 

Maybe this little fella will survive! I think they probably don't get enough sunlight where they are planted. I hope we get at least one pumpkin.

Last is our Mammoth sunflower. It got huge and did pretty well until it was almost time to harvest the seeds. The flower came crashing down and died soon after. The seeds were not fully developed, unfortunately. We had a tiny sunflower that my son picked without asking as well. Oh, well! 

All in all, I have learned this year that growing my own food is amazing! I was even inspired to get an Aerogarden for inside, so we could continue to have a small garden all year. 

I am, however, very grateful that I don't have to rely on our garden for winter survival. If my garden has failures, I can just run to the store. That's a huge blessing. Especially since quite a few plants did fail me this year. Or more like I failed them.

 I will be dreaming of the magic of our next garden all winter long. It's truly therapeutic and FUN to have a garden, no matter how big or small! And I will be praying that spider mites and other pests stay away!

Happy September!

- Merewyn

Garden fails and victories so far this year

This is the first time in my married life that we've had enough yard space for a nice sized garden. We had bought some seeds during the winter and started some indoors. I'm so glad I did, since seeds were hard to come by in the spring when the pandemic took off. This was our first time planting with seeds. It's also the first time planting many different fruits and vegetables. It's a big experiment for us this year, since we don't know what we're doing! And we don't know what grows really well in our desert climate.

What we planted by seed:

Egg plant

Small pumpkins

Watermelon

Cucumber

Zucchini

Peas

Herbs

Tomatoes

Shallots

Lettuce

Melons

Bare roots we planted:

Sweet potatoes 

Strawberries

Full plants we planted:

More tomatoes

More herbs

Raspberry bushes

Blackberry bushes

It was a lot! We wanted to try a lot of plants to see what produces the best. We bought some wood raised garden boxes and we also planted some straight into the ground around our house. We have had a lot of failures so far! But also some surprises. 

Fails:  

-One of our pumpkin plants died but the other one is happier to have it gone. I think I must have planted them too close together to begin with. I'm glad I have one left! It's a pumpkin for pumpkin pies.

Pumpkin plant

-The cucumbers are looking a bit crispy and have halted growing. That always happens to cucumbers that I'm trying to grow! 

- The egg plants sprouted but have stopped growing! They've been tiny sprouts for a couple of months now. So sad.

- The tomatoes I started from seeds indoors all died after I transplanted them outside.

- I had two containers full of peas. On container grew well and we got some peas but then it suddenly dried up and died. The other peas I have in different locations are happy though!

- We had some cantaloupe type melons that we started inside and they died after we transplanted them into the garden box.

- I can't tell if the shallots we planted are happy or not! They haven't grown much but I have idea how they are doing underground!

- I am not sure how the zucchini plants are doing. They're still alive and green but not really growing. I hope they start growing because I really want zucchini. God, please bless my garden! It needs help! 

- All the herbs planted by seed have died. The ones we bought as plants recently are doing alright so far.

- The lettuce has about two that are starting to grow but the rest are very tiny. Not sure how they will end up.

- The tomatoes we bought as plants aren't doing too well either. We always had good luck with tomatoes, so I'm not sure what the deal is. At least 3/4 have a little tomato growing on them!

Early girl tomato plant

Happy plants so far:

- I planted the watermelon seeds on a whim, thinking they would not even sprout. Well, 1/3 of them sprouted and now the plant is HUGE! 

The watermelon plant has two flowers now! I can't wait to see how it does!

Watermelon flower

- I planted 3 sunflowers underneath my daughter's window. 2/3 sprouted and one is so big already! The other one is underneath it. A wee bit too close together.

Sunflowers

The strawberries are doing well but they won't produce until next year.

Strawberry plants

-The sweet potatoes are alive but I'm not sure if they should be bigger than they are at this point in the season...

- The peas in our raised garden bed are doing decently well. The kids have had a lot of fun picking these. I'll definitely plant them again next year by seed!

Peas

- Our raspberries and blackberries have been doing well. I expect they'll produce a lot next year. I'm excited for that!

Raspberries and Blackberries

I think that's it! We've definitely killed a lot of plants. Our thumbs are sort of a rotten brown color. Not completely black, but dangerously close. I hope what we've learned so far will make our garden next year so much better! I will make an update on our garden in a couple of months. One thing I know for sure is that next year we will start seeds indoors much earlier. Also, since we have such a short growing season we plan to buy more plants that have already been started in a green house.

Although I've killed most of the plants, gardening has been so relaxing! I love being outside and watering and weeding. I keep telling myself that we will get better at gardening every year and that ONE day, we will have oodles of fresh produce. Pleasssssse.