Look how her garden grows!

It's been a while my friends, but while I've been busy at work my little garden has been flourishing.  Due to my garden consultant, Carrie Dunn, it has been properly pruned and maintained.  I have been able to harvest radishes, strawberries, basil, and soon lettuce and string beans! Below you will see some highlights from this week.

In order to grow in my gardening skills I began attending edible gardening classes at Roger's Garden and have been learning all sorts of interesting things...ie. there are no organic pesticides to kill grasshoppers...great...and that I will have to "breed"/"mate" my corn crop (good thing I have two!--don't want to have incestuous corn).

  

string beans

corn

lettuce

     radish about to be picked

                                                  

harvested radish

tomatoes--waiting patiently for them to turn yellow

(yellow pear tomatoes)

I'm currently taking suggestions and requests for fall and winter growth.

Weeks later....

Okay kids, it's been a while, but well worth the wait.  After some some serious encouragement by my gardening mentor, we set out to make and plant the raised garden bed.  Much to Simon's surprise we did successfully build the raised garden box by ourselves (please see picture No.1, followed by picture No.2).  


After some sweat, a lot of hard dirt, bugs and battling the monstrosity that is the lavender bush, we managed  to plant a beautiful little garden.  We did purchase two strawberry plants, a basil plant, rosemary, and a sweat pea plant that impersonated a cantaloupe plant (ahem, I didn't realize that some plants are liars...or maybe he is like the duck that thought he was a chicken in the movie "Babe"....the sweat pea plant that wanted to be a cantaloupe plant....I digress.  Anyways, everything you see and will continue to see sprouting is grown from seed.  Also, on either side of my raised box are tomato plants along with corn growing along the fence.


I truly could not have done this without my dear gardening expert and extraordinaire, Carrie Dunn.  I promised you my first cantaloupe, but seeing as it is a sweat pea--you get those, not as exciting I know...I owe you!  Thank you soooooooooooo much! 


I am so excited to see these little guys grow!

Photo No. 1: Birthday gift from the Dunns!!!

Photo No. 2: Before

Photo No. 3: After

Photo No. 4: Aerial view of garden bed

Photo No. 5: Carrie Dunn, Garden Extraordinaire

Photo No. 6: dirt encrusted hands

Seeds Planted (5.23.10):

carrots

radishes

romaine lettuce

baby lettuce

peas

onions

quote of the day

process

God has been taking me through a huge growing process in the last seven or eight months.  It's as though He just flipped a switch in me and changed my heart again, made a little space in there that He was going to move into in a big way.  I'm sharing this to share my excitement and a little apprehension for what I know is coming.  I have been experiencing the freedom He wants me to have in His Son.  The longings and yearning of my heart have been changing and I won't say that it's been easy, but the Lord has been there every step of the way, revealing Himself and His steadfast love for me through everything.

Garden Update: week 2

So this last weekend, I got motivated to rip out some more weeds--this was no easy task...after 2 hours bent over pulling out weeds, my back and knees were hating me. But I did clear almost a 2' by 2' foot area (there were a lot of weeds okay).  Much more weeding to come...and garden re-shaping.  See pictures below...

Also, garden questions:

1. Are "rolly pollies" (pill bugs) good for a garden, because there are a ton of these in mine.

2. In picture number 3 below you might notice a grasshopper taunting me by sitting on my tomato plant--how can I get him to leave?!

3. Carrie, I will totally need your expertise with getting rid of bugs (ants, spiders, pincher bugs) there are a lot of these in the dirt.  I did come across 1, yes only 1, worm--they are good right?!  Also, I have bees--bees are good. 

1. Yard, before picture.

2. Weed clearing--doesn't look very impressive. (Also, please note the plastic 

pot I threw at the grasshopper that flew onto my tomato plant--I will win!).

3. Grasshopper.

growth

What I am growing....pic. 1 is my baby tomato plant, pic. 2 are my potted seeds (WOW), pic. 3 is my bell pepper plant--I wonder what color it will be?  I hope it is yellow!

Garden Theology

The other day, while attempting to rip out weeds in our garden I began cutting back our enormous over-grown tomato plant, and the concept of the vine and the branches became clearer in such a tangible way.  I was cutting off the dead branches and the ones that looked scrawny so that the stronger branches could continue to grow and bear fruit.  It was almost a little funny how sensitive I was toward this tomato plant; plucking it’s little branches and cutting off the dead branches, and ripping a good portion of the plant out completely so that it could grow new, and into a healthier plant that might actually bear fruit.  I actually apologized to the plant out loud about what I was doing and told it that it will actually end up being so much better for it—I feel like this is what God is saying to me right now.  He is taking the bad parts out and cutting things off, and it might hurt for a short time, but it will be better in the long run.  Ultimately I just want to be a healthy plant that bears good fruit, even if it feels like the gardener is ripping parts out from me right now; He knows what He is doing. 

The analogy continues…  So far in this analogy we have, God the Gardener and me/us the over-grown non-producing tomato plant, who are we missing?  That’s right, the grasshopper.  The stubborn, hungry, selfish grasshopper/Satan.  Let me set this up for you:  There I am trimming back this plant, tugging, ripping, etc. and then out of the corner of my eye I see this dead, brown branch,…nope, it’s a grasshopper having his lunch.  I tried to shoo it away by shaking the plant some more, he didn’t budge.  I tried throwing empty plastic pots at it, I don’t even think I interrupted his chewing.  Three pots, and not even a taunting glance, argh!  I couldn’t kill it, nor would I know how for fear of it flying in my face, so I just let it be.  But Satan was totally embodied in that stubborn grasshopper, eating and gnawing away at you/me/the tomato plant, slowly eating away at the plant and is even more glued to and ready to pounce when the plant begins to bear fruit.  I hate grasshoppers.  And satan.

I can't buy it, so I'll have to build it

So I went to The Home Depot (just realized this when reading the sign, this whole time I’ve just been calling it Home Depot, but I kind of like it with the “The”—even more intimidating) and was looking around for a raised planter box for my herb/vegetable garden that I want to grow.  I’ve slowly been lured back into growing my own food.  I love the idea of growing and eating my own food and knowing exactly where it is coming from—besides the obvious benefit of saving money on groceries. 

A few weeks ago my roommate and I planted tomato and bell pepper seeds and have been watching them grow in there little pots—life is so neat, this is what being a parent must be like, ha ha ha, just kidding. 

Then I saw Food, Inc., and it reminded me of all the eating and buying changes I made 6 years ago after reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and since then have forgotten.  It just really makes you stop and think about what you are putting in your body and what you want and should be putting in there.  Ehh!—just thinking about how some of the animals were being treated in that film, which was followed by the thought of never eating a hamburger ever again. 

Back to my garden…I say that I live on a “farm”, so I thought, why not actually grow things—that’s what they do on farms.  So (drum roll please) I’m going to plant a herb/vegetable garden!  Yea!  My lovely friend Carrie Dunn (here is your shout out!) has graciously given me seeds to plant to start my garden along with some tips and tricks she has been learning—she is totally her mother’s daughter. 

So, this planter box I must build…I think I will need help with (wink, wink, Simon or any other obliged gentleman reading this blog).  I’m going to do some research online, but its got to be pretty simple: wood, nails, hammer, man to help build it.  P.S. Simon, if you didn’t know this yet, Carrie offered your services to rototil my yard for a payment in beer and dinner, but I think I might just need your help to build this planter box. 

Reasoning for the planter box: 

1.              There are tons of bugs in our yard—is that normal—I hate bugs!  An abnormal amount of bugs.

2.              There are ka-zillions of ants, who when disturbed or find out that someone is trying to poison them crawl into my room somehow.  Therefore, I’d love to keep the ants happy and undisturbed and out of my room.

3.              Our dirt is very hard and very dry.

4.              I’d like to keep these bugs out of my vegetable home as best I can.

5.              I’d like to keep our crazy weeds out of my growing space as well.