Garden Summary 2018 - Part 1: Getting Started

This year I finally got to create a garden outside! After keeping plants in pots in all my windowsills through school, it was wonderful to let them grow to their potential under the sun's full light. Not having to worry about watering them every week was nice too.

I decided to start small with one raised garden bed. That way it would stay manageable, and I could always expand in the future. With help from my boyfriend and his dad, I built and placed a 4-ft by 8-ft bed that extended a little over a foot up from the ground. We bought a few bags of garden soil to get things started.

Here's Coco, performing his supervisor duties as I screw the boards together for the garden frame. 

The ground is a little uneven, so Ed digs along the edges of where the bed will be placed. 

"Really? Right here? You know this is my prime pooping spot." 

Instead of starting things from seed like I usually do with my other experiments, I decided to buy some starter plants this year. It was better for the timing, and I didn't have the time or space (or planning capabilities) to grow my own seedlings this year. After a shopping spree at Home Depot with a gift card from my parents - last year's Christmas gift - we came home with 10 various nightshades, as well as a few random herbs and strawberries.

Nightshades staged in their future homes. Starting in the front and moving clockwise: two Roma tomatoes, jalapeno, serrano, red bell pepper, purple bell pepper, green bell pepper, purple Cherokee heirloom tomato, Thai chili, and another jalapeno. 

After a few weeks of growth, it was clear that the Romas were going to need some extra support - they grow fast! I found a few old tomato cages under the porch to help them along their way. Everything got established well, we didn't lose any plants. 

A view of the garden from above. You can see just how big the tomatoes are compared to the other plants. 

Another view to include some more of the yard. Look to the top right: Behind the concrete wall is where I planted my herbs and strawberries. 

 It wasn't a long wait before everything started flowering, and where there are flowers there is soon fruit! I mostly just took pictures of the tomatoes, which I'm still trying to understand, because I don't even really like tomatoes that much. At least not raw. I think part of the excitement is that of growing something new and learning in the process. There are also many different things to make with tomatoes that I do like, such as spaghetti sauce and ketchup. I picked a sauce variety for this reason.

The first blooms on my Roma tomato plant. 

Roma tomato setting fruit!

Check out these big boys! 

Sadly, I only ever got to harvest a few tomatoes, despite having two large, productive plants. The problem? The dog kept eating them before I got a chance to harvest! The day after I took that last photo above, those beautiful tomatoes were gone. That's how it was all summer: every time anything got close to ripening, Coco would sneak into the garden and gobble it up.

As I learned through a little bit of research, green tomatoes are not good for dogs. The chemical solanine is present in the green parts of nightshades; this is the reason why green potatoes are inedible. This compound is no longer present once the tomatoes ripen, but until then they're not a good thing to feed the pup. I did what I could with my available resources to keep him out, but it was nothing against the determined, constant hunger of a Lab.

Next year I'm putting up a fence.


Until next time,

Jess

Planting Red Bell Pepper Seeds

As you can see, one of my favorite things is to collect seeds from food I'm eating and see if they will grow. Some time last week, I made stuffed peppers, an absolutely delicious meal. At home my mom uses green bell peppers, but I prefer more color, so I bought four red bell peppers. Yellow and orange are really good too.

Once the food was in the oven, I pulled a chair up to the table where I was working and started collecting the seeds from the four bell pepper tops.

I put them in a small tupperware bowl and set that in the window so that the seeds could dry before putting them in storage. Every so often, like once or twice a day, I would pick up the bowl and swirl it around so the seeds would dry evenly.

Once I assumed they were all dry, I poured all the seeds into an old pill bottle. I saw this on Pinterest, and it has worked out well so far. I labeled the bottle with what seeds were inside and when I harvested them.

That's a lot of seeds! I'm not sure if I'm ever going to use them all, but they sure are pretty to look at.

Once I had that established, I put some potting soil in a cup and put 5 or 6 seeds in the middle. Usually I would only use 2 or 3 seeds max, but you can never be too sure how well seeds from store-bought foods are going to germinate, especially if they are not organic. There are so many hybrid varieties out there in the grocery stores that you never really know what you're going to get. I don't expect to get a perfect red bell pepper from this experiment, but I'll be happy if I get something close.

Here's my cup of dirt with seeds inside:

Fast forward to last night: I decided to check on my cup of dirt and I saw two little sprouts pushing their way up through the soil!

I took a picture this morning:

The two bigger ones are what I saw last night, and since then a new baby with its seed still stuck on its head has popped up as well. 

I've noticed that when growing peppers from seeds collected from the fruit, some of the babies just don't ever escape from the seed hull. I suppose that's just all a part of natural/artificial selection. I'm assuming it has something to do with growing hybrids. 

Once these babies get bigger, I'll thin them down to just one plant, which I hope to be able to keep in this small pot/cup/thingy. I'll probably end up having to prune it to keep it small, which will delay fruit production unfortunately. But if I'm going to keep it small, it's going to need nice thick stems in order to hold up those big bell pepper pods! I'd really rather not have to stake the plant up or put it in a tomato cage. 

Of course, here I go counting my peppers before they flower... 

It's fun to imagine the possibilities, but for now I must remain patient. I will continue to post as things change. 

Until next time,

- Jess