Garden Update: Day 121

First let's take a look inside at my plants I have growing.  I have a red pepper plant, carrots, and grape tomatoes.

-Day 121 for the grape tomatoes

-Day 78 for the carrots

-Day 58 for the Red Pepper plant (this is from the day I started it, it was a starter when I bought it)

My peppers are doing great!  I need to move them into a bigger pot soon because once the peppers get big it will topple the plant.  Currently, I am out of container soil and need to pick up a few bags sometime this week.  I have some things I will be planting the first week of July.

Look at all those baby peppers and blossoms.  :)

Growing so great inside.....and all protected from those nasty horned caterpillars.  :)

So.....my plan today was to pull up my carrots so I did.

Yey......I have carrots but they are the tiniest little things I've ever seen.  LOL

I put the tiny carrots in the compost pile in my backyard.  I figured the birds or rabbits might enjoy them.  They didn't look appealing and they are just so tiny.  They did still grow though and that makes me happy that I grew them.  The leaves are very beautiful on them.  I think using the plastic soda bottle was just too small for them.  They needed much more room to probably grow right.

Here's what my garden inside looks like now.  Just my red peppers and grape tomatoes.  :)

Now.....I mentioned yesterday on my update that today I would be digging up my potatoes to see if there's anything there.  I was disappointed when I woke up to rain this morning.  But luckily, it had stopped raining and dried up a little bit so I was able to head out and dig up the plants.

I carried the potatoes over to my compost area.  My compost area is just where I dump extra soil, or dead plants.  It's an an area where we used to have a swing set.  Eventually, if I can save up enough money I want to build a Greenhouse in this place.  It would be the perfect place and the best part it will keep the bugs and small animals away.  One can dream right?  :)

Back to the potatoes......I took the stakes out and dumped the pot over.  I wore an old pair of gloves and moved the soil around and to my surprise....a potato.  OMG I got so excited.  :)

I dug around in the soil and found 7 potatoes in total in a range of sizes.  :)

I took them inside and showed Nate.  He thought it was awesome.  I washed them all off and now I gotta plan a meal to cook them in.  :)

Here's the compost pile with the soil.

I put my container, stakes and gloves in the shed for the next potato planting.  Once it's sunny and dry out, I'll rinse the stakes and container and get them all clean to reuse.

Here's the plants in my outside container garden without the potato pot.

Lots more blooms on the tomato plants.

My Marigolds are doing beautiful.  Marigolds are great companions for Potato and Tomato plants.

An update on my avocado pit.  Roots have been growing from the bottom for a few weeks now.

I turned it over so you could see the roots.  :)

Garden Update: Day 120

My garden is still growing and all the plants seem to be very happy.  :)

I have several little squash growing on the plant.  I've only had one that was ready for harvest which we ate earlier this week.  I think I will probably have one or two ready next week.  Some are really tiny.  The squash I planted from seed 70 days ago.

I noticed today that I have some tomato flower blooms here and there on my big boy tomatoes.  Today is day 78 for them from seed.

My zucchini are still multiplying.  Do you see them?  Hint:  There's two on the plant.

I've drawn a red arrow so you can see where the little one is.  :)  It's really tiny.  haha  The bigger one will probably be ready for harvest next week sometime.  :)  These were grown with the squash from seed 70 days ago.

As I was checking things out this afternoon my Harley was watching from the back door.  He's in mid-meow.  :)  He wasn't feeling good yesterday.  :(  He's doing much better but he's really clingy today.  I can't leave the room without him by my side.  Poor kitty.

Stay tuned b/c tomorrow I plan on digging up my potatoes to see if they are ready for harvest.  The potatoes are on day 110 and I feel it's time to check them.  It's going to be exciting to see if there's any potatoes there and it will be more exciting if there's actually potatoes in there.  I'm also going to see if any of the carrots are ready to be pulled.

Bonfire

Yesterday afternoon, I went to my parents to throw some personal papers into a bonfire with my sister.  My sister, had a bunch of things that would take too long to shred so she thought it was a good idea to burn it.  She's done it before at my parents so she asked if I had anything to shred and I said yes.  So, I grabbed my bag of papers I needed to shred and met at the parents house.

My dad was in charge of the fire.  He helped us throw papers into the fire and he kept the fire going by using some branches.

My nephew was riding his bike around keeping a good distance from the fire.

2013 Spotsylvania Farmers Market- Visit 3

I stopped off at the Farmers Market on the way home this afternoon.  I walked around to every vendor scooping out what produce was for sale.  Nothing really called out to me that I had to have.

I didn't want to leave empty handed so I decided to get some blueberries ($4) at the C&T Produce tent and then came home.  Now what to use them for....pie, bars, cake, muffins????

UPDATE:  I used about a cup of farm fresh blueberries for dinner tonight (6/22).  We felt like breakfast for dinner so that's what we had.  I added some blueberries to the pancake batter and they were delicious.

  

The best......made from scratch pancake recipe.

Sister and Niece Date

I had off from work today so I made plans to go see my sister and my niece.  

When I got to my sisters place, Ella had just woken up.  She was just chillin'.

We went to the Dairy Bar Restaurant for lunch where Ashley treated me.  Thanks sis!  :)  Ashley got burger sliders with fries and I got a BLT sammich with fries.  Ella slept while we ate.  :)  My sister, also got a milkshake and I got one scoop of cookies n' cream blue bell ice cream.  It was so good and creamy.  :)

After we were full we went to Cary Town to Penzeys Spices.  I needed to pick up some more Vanilla Beans so I could start another batch of Vanilla Extract.  

We then went to Target.  Ella pretty much slept the whole time.  LOL  She did get a little cranky towards the end of the target trip.  Once we got back in the car she fell asleep again.  haha  :)

At target, I picked up some treats for Harley and in the $1.00 bin I found a cute notepad where you could fill out what you need to do during a busy week.  I think I will use that at work.  I also got a cute pack of veggie tags that I could use if I get a lot of extra veggies from my garden to giveaway.  :)

Big Salad

For dinner tonight, I put together a big ol' salad.

Yes, I used my first veggies I harvested yesterday and this morning.  They were delicious and made me happy because I grew them all by myself.  :)  YUM!

I chopped up my squash, zucchini, tomato, green pepper, onion, and a few of my farm fresh eggs (hard boiled).  I also baked some chicken, and steak then chopped up. I added the salad bag to a big bowl and then mixed in the meats, shredded cheese, chopped veggies, some bacon bits, croutons and black pepper. 

***This past weekend was fun.  We went to RVA to a Richmond Flying Squirrels game with some friends.  Beforehand, we ate dinner at Buz and Ned's Real BBQ.  It was good.  Ashley and Ella joined us for dinner so it was nice to see them before the game.  :)  

Garden Update: Day 115

Today, marks day 115 of my garden.  :)  

Yesterday, I picked my zuke.  I felt he was ready and he was because he snapped right off.  :)

This morning, I picked my first squash.  I felt it was ready as well and it snapped right off too.

A nice little bee pollinating the plants.  :)

Inside.....everything is still growing nicely.

I have tiny little pepper buds.  :)

Oh and an update on my bluebirds......They are all furry and snug in their nest.  :)

Garden Update: Day 110

Last week, on June 12th was day 110 for my garden.

Here's my container garden outside.....and I was very happy to discover.....

 Little baby squash....3 of them.  1 that was getting big and 2 tiny ones.

And I also found one little zucchini.....