This year, for some unknown reason, I decided I really wanted to try my hand at a garden. I thought the learning and teaching opportunities with the kids would be endless and perhaps if they grew it, they would eat it (a Mom can hope, right?). My thumb is really, truly quite black, but we decided to jump in and give it a whirl! Chris gave me a small raised bed garden this year for Mother's Day and got it all set up for me. We're starting small with just four plants this year: two types of tomatoes, a cucumber plant (which is taking over the whole garden--this may have been a poor choice on our part), and a green pepper plant (Jacob's favorite veggie). So far we have two tomatoes growing on each of the tomato plants and one green pepper coming in with bunches more flowers blooming. Do the flowers all turn into veggies? If they do, we should have a great harvest off our little pepper plant. Our cucumber plant, well, it is growing...all over the place (and we even bought the so called "compact" kind!), has flowers, but no sign of any type of veggies yet. It also has some sort of white moldy stuff on some of the leaves. Hmmmmm....perhaps those endless educational opportunities I was talking about for the kids will also apply to me? Definitely need to google that one. We also planted our flower bed out front with wave petunias. Petunias are not my favorite, but seem to fare the best in our front bed that gets almost full sun for the whole day. Last year our petunias did not fill in very much so this year we are hopeful that a touch of miracle grow will turn that one around. I've recently had the itch to do a small container garden on the patio with a lettuce in it, but I haven't made it very far with that one yet.
Needless to say, we are total novices and have no clue what we're doing. BUT, we are having fun and I guess that is really all that matters. Jacob has taken on the chore of helping me water almost daily in our hot KY summer heat and occasionally Joshua and Grace get in on the action. Everyone, including Mommy and Daddy enjoy an evening jaunt around the back of the house to check on the progress of our veggies. Joshua and Grace can see it from their bedroom window and report back daily what seems to be growing or blooming. We have no idea if our harvest will be bountiful, but we have no doubt the memories will be!
Joshua is hard at work taking care of the petunias. I forgot how much Jacob enjoyed watering the plants at this age. He is a helper!
Mommy is thrilled to see the fruits of our labor! Look! A tiny tomato (that isn't so tiny anymore...this photo was a couple weeks ago).
Joshua and Gracie are hard at work tending the veggies!
An evening jaunt around the house to check things out! Grace is reporting to Daddy that we have TWO tomatoes on our plant now!
Jacob is such a blessing to his Mama! He takes his chores so seriously and works at them with great dedication. He is thrilled he is old enough to "work the hose" this year...he can turn it on and off and get the cans filled all on his own!
Not too interested in cheesing while he watered, but here he is taking care of the cucumbers (those are not so small anymore either!).
You may still be able to trellis that cucumber if the stem is still flexible enough. Just pound a stake in near it and tie it up to it every foot or so. Google powdery mildew first to see if that's what's on the cucumber. Have fun w/the garden, my kids are really enjoying ours, even if they do get a little confused about what is ok to pull out of the ground (radish, beans, what's the difference, right?) - Jen L.
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