How does your garden grow...

Mine is growing swell. I am getting so excited about it! I thought I would share how well things are going through pictures!

 My first tomato is making an appearance, and there are a lot of little flowers all over my tomato plants!

 My cucumber is getting vines and is starting to flower.

 My green beans are getting nice and tall(they started as seeds)

 My onions are starting to bend!

 Peppers are flowering.

Peas are starting to bud and form itty bitty pods!

We all know from yesterdays post how my broccoli is doing, hopefully I'm still able to save them.  I didn't get a picture of my carrots but they are tiny little buds starting to sprout!

Pesky Little worms

The other day I noticed my broccoli was getting holes in it.  I thought it was strange, but since I'm new to gardening I just didn't think much about it.  Well the next day the holes were bigger, and then today when I went outside to look at my plants guess what the leaves were almost gone.  I thought maybe it was a big animal eating my plants and I was starting to get a bit mad at them.  Especially since there is this cat that is always hanging around, I thought that little imp of a cat had gotten to my broccoli. Come to find out it was not a big animal, or a bird, or that little cat, it is and was something much smaller.  A broccoli worm- A LOT of broccoli worms.

I scoured the Internet and found out how to get rid of them. A product called DT- it has a really big long name (Bacillus thuringiensis) and can be found in both a powder and in an already mixed spray.  Everything I read said until it starts working just pluck the little buggers off the broccoli and kill them.  This product is organic and made of a bacteria that basically makes the worms stop eating and essentially they starve to death.  Sounds kind of harsh I guess, but I would like the opportunity to eat my broccoli and not to give it all away.  So off to work I go.  I'm gonna get these guys if it's the last thing I do!

Garden-1

Well all of my little seeds that I have planted have begun to sprout.  They are turning into some fine looking plants.  Although I seem to have an animal that is liking to bite the tops off of some of my plants which makes me not too happy.  Overall they are doing extremely well though!

I started weeding the garden today.  Yes you heard that right, just now starting.  Since I have not planted anything before I wanted to make sure I knew what was a plant and what was a weed.  So I got to work today on it.  It is only about half weeded but for me getting started is half the battle, especially with two little ones running around.  I have found it a bit hard some days to get out there and just makes sure to water the plants.  We shall see how it all goes over once I go back to work-which I'm sad to say is Monday. Man did this time fly by, but it has been a huge blessing but more on that later!

I still can't see much of my carrots which makes me a bit sad because Elijah loves carrots! I do however see my bean and pea plants growing leaps and bounds everyday.  Same with my onion and garlic.  My tomato and cucumber plants have not grown too much at this point in time but they are starting to flower which makes me very excited.  My pepper plants are growing but no flowers yet, and this weekend I have to get my herbs planted in my planters.  We are also hopefully going to get some compost and put our new grass seed in to see if we can get the front lawn looking any better.  If it works there maybe next year we will tackle the back yard a bit harder!

On a side note- if anyone know a really good homemade salsa recipe I would love to have it.  I don't like salsa but my husband does and I would like to make some with all our fresh herbs and veggies we are growing. I'm just not so good at making up recipes when I don't like the taste of it to start, makes it hard to know when I found a good one!  I'm also looking for a good spaghetti sauce recipe but I will probably just try to make some of those up since I love spaghetti, but if you have a good starting recipe that would be amazing!

My daddy was here...

It was so wonderful to have my dad here this past week.  We had a ton of fun with him and he really helped us out around the house.  So good to have such a wonderful dad who is always willing to help us out when he is on vacation.

First, he started working more with Elijah on his walking.  I have to say in the week he was here, Elijah has gotten quite a bit better. He still will not let go of us when standing still-he's not totally sure he is brave enough to stand on his own yet! But I'm not rushing it too much, he likes to get into everything like every good child does, so I'm fine with just crawling at this point!

Second, he snuggled Athaiah a lot.  Which is great, because she loves to be held.  She knows the instant you put her down and will usually start fussing so she can get back into your arms. She definitely loves to snuggle(which always makes me happy-there is not much better than baby snuggles)

Third, he did the dishes! This is huge for me since usually I'm the only one that does them here, so it was absolutely amazing to have them done after every meal and to not see a huge pile in the sink(like there is now).

Forth, we got a lot of good talks in and did a lot of catching up and reminiscing which is always a wonderful thing to get to do, since I don't get to see family very often being so far away.

Fifth, he totally updated my yard/garden for me.  I told him I wanted to dig out a whole area of plants and put in veggies, so guess what he did.  He dug it all up and now I have all kinds of veggie plants growing! 

Then I told him I really needed to clean out the other flower beds and rearrange some stuff, and put some more perennials in so that I didn't have to plant so many flowers every year.  So guess what? He got out the shovel and dug up a bunch of plants to thin it out and organize it. He also bought us a beautiful Rose bush, and some perenial seeds!

Put a new flower bed out in front of the house-which I have been wanting to do since we moved in. 

He even worked with Greg on putting landscape timbers in to give the beds some slight definition!  Let's just say I love it all so very much!  Don't you think it looks great? (disclaimer-don't mind some of the wilty looking plants, those are some that we transplanted but will come back looking better next year since they were already starting to bloom when we dug them up)

I will follow up my gardening in some other posts, because I will admit I don't have the greenest thumb, although it does run deep in my family so hopefully I will be able to tap into it for all these wonderful new plants!

He also bought us some fertilizer/dandilion killer, and some new grass seed.  Needless to say our yard looks a bit sad, but will look much better.  I will do a follow up on this one also since you can't see the fertilizer or grass seed!

It was an amazing week and we were all very sad to see him leave yesterday, but look forward to hopefully seeing him sometime soon! Now we are looking forward to this coming weekend when we travel via plane(for the first time with children) to KY for my brother in laws wedding! YEAH more family time, and a wonderful addition to the Turley family!