Catching up.

With the mission trip taking up a big portion of my focus the last week and a half, I'm a little behind. I wanted to have my tomatoes & peppers already started, my second wave of broccoli already planted in the garden and soil in some unused beds turned and composted..........none of which is done! I've also got some pictures of the garden that I wanted to post but haven't. So I'm going to do some catching up. And yes I still have some Nicaragua pictures to post. So here goes:



First of all we have an emergency.................5 small, wrinkly, sad garden tomatoes left! Which is still better than any store bought tomato, but I've got to get started planting my spring tomatoes......now! As soon as my wife has to buy one $5 tomato from Publix I'll hear about it (she is a vegetarian)............"doesn't taste like the garden ones", "it feels like plastic", "they have no smell".......... yadayadayada.





In the mean time I hardened off most of my broccoli & planted them right before I left for Nicaragua. I'm hoping to harvest them in time to plant some corn in their spot by spring.



I do have some more broccoli that I'm hardening off right now. I burnt some seedlings trying to keep them warm so I have a nice little gap for extended harvesting.


My potatoes seem to be doing great despite about 5 days in the mid to low 20's and some frost bite.



I've sowed some squash, cuke, watermelon & pumpkin seeds (we're from New England so we love pumpkin soup!). You may be thinking "wow, that's a bit early" but you don't understand that I have a problem..........pickleworms! If you don't know about pickleworms you're lucky. Moths lay eggs just after sunset (so you can't see them), then in the morning when you're checking your garden the worms are already hatched and on the move.....into the stems of the squash or any relative of the squash. Once they start burrowing, it's over. You just can't kill them. They are known to move up from south Florida around May and move up into the Carolina's where they usually stall out. So the trick is to plant & harvest before they move on through. This will be our third try at growing squash, I got 'em beat this time!

After tonight's 25 degree low I'm going to sow my tomato & pepper seeds....a little later than I wanted but it'll be all good.


I'll leave with this cool tree I saw in Nicaragua........I was told it was a cherry tree and that it never has any leaves! Weird. I need to investigate to make sure I didn't loose anything in the translation. That happens from time to time. Anyway, I did eat some of the "cherries"..................I thought they sucked. But what do I know, I'm just a Gringo.

January- State of the Garden

It was a nice run, but my fall tomatoes finally said goodbye. Low's in the 20's and 30's with high's in the mid-50's did them in. Don't feel too bad for us, it's mid-January and we're stocked with tomatoes! The cool thing is I'll be starting my spring tomatoes inside in about 2 weeks! Sweet! These pictures above show my tomatoes last week, and............gone this week.





Celery & Brussels spout. Not only have I never grown these veggies before, I've never even seen them grown before! Actually I've never seen most of the veggies I'm growing grown before.......thanks to the modern day grocery store! (speaking of modern day grocery stores....do you remember back in the 70's & 80's, before scanners, when the cashiers memorized all the prices and typed them into a cash register? lol!) So I don't always know how the plants are doing since I don't really know what they look like when they grow. The down side of being a green horn! I do believe both of these plants have suffered from a lack of sun.




I can grow a mean crop of green manure though!




The last of the fall garden- 4 cabbage left and a raised bed of onions. The family didn't dig the cabbage as much as I expected. I think these cabbage have been growing for about 5 months (including inside under the lights)! I'm looking forward to them getting out of the way.

The onions on the other hand, we can't wait. Again I've never grown onions before and I'm hoping they got enough sun.





The new guys to the garden, potatoes, beets and some radish. Just planted these around Christmas. Hate to be a broken record but............never grown these either! I'm kinda excited for some potatoes.



My first compost bin. I'm such an enviromentalist!



And finaly a quick crop of 40 broccoli pants on the way. I'm going to plant them where the tomatoes were.

They need to grow quick......I want to plant my spring garden the 1st week of March!