Oh La La - The Garden is Growing

I planted a garden this year for the first time ever!! I've planted before, but never an abundance of vegetables and never with a plan. This year, I had a plan, I made some boxes and I am gardening!! I planted spinach, green peppers, red peppers, edemame, green beans, sugar peas, cherry tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, zucchini, yellow squash, eggplant, jalapeno peppers, collard greens, garlic, cucumber, watermelon, and pumpkin. So far, I've eaten a green pepper, green beans, sugar peas, cherry tomatoes, zucchini and yellow squash from my garden!! I love it!! I love watching the plants grow. I love eating my own food that I planted and watered. I'm looking forward to many years of gardening and getting better at it.

There have been quite a few lessons learned so far! When I told someone that I was going to garden this year, they said, "you are going to spend $20 for one tomato after everything is said and done". I went in with ZERO expectations. I was hoping I would get a pepper or two, a tomato or two, maybe I would see a flower here or there. At the end of the day, they were wrong!! With my zero expectations, I planted everything a little two close together. I have two 8'x4' garden boxes and I planted everything about a foot apart. I bought the medium sized tomato cages because I figured there was no way they were going to grow over 2 feet tall. My cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, yellow squash, and zucchini are all in a little over half of one box and they are SQUISHED! The cucumber plants are just trying to find the sun and they are climbing up the tomato plants. The yellow squash are getting overwhelmed by the zucchini so they are growing sideways now. Big lesson: provide the plants with more space!! Lesson two: I wasn't aware that you were supposed to remove the flower from the spinach plant! I missed my spinach opportunity because it all flowered and the plant becomes very bitter after flowering. Quite frankly, I'm not sure if I would plant spinach again. I'm not sure why not, but I'm not sure why either. Lesson three: tomatoes require stakes and cages!

All in all, it's been a fun experience and I'm looking forward to gardening adventures. Here are some pictures of the bounty so far:

The edemame wasn't quite ready yet! I got a little two excited!