Update on my Summer Project–A Container Garden

Here is a link to my last post if you want to compare the improvements and failures that have happened over the past two weeks.

We were able to enjoy the two squash that I showed in my last gardening post.  They were yummy, but something got to my squash plants.  I think it might have been bore worms. I was checking for eggs and didn’t see any.  My only thought is that they attached and did their dirty work while we were on vacation. 

Steve noticed the middle plant was dead at the base of the vine (the leaves were going from a vibrant green to a pale yellow) last Saturday when he was attaching the plants to stakes to get them to grow up and not out.  He pulled it out and we were hopeful that the rest of plants would survive.  We didn’t think it was bore worms at the time, we thought the base had rotted because it was being watered at the base in addition to several big rain storms that had come through that week.  I noticed during the rest of the week that the rest of my squash plants seem to have fallen prey to the same thing.  Here is a picture of my once beautiful squash bed.

I have lost all of my yellow squash – the one thing I was most excited about.  I am not sure if the butternut squash are going to make it or not either.  I am keeping an eye on them, but I noticed that the leaves are starting to yellow when I was taking the pictures.

 

My strawberries are producing well about every two to three weeks. It looks like this may be a good strawberry week coming up with all the green berries on the bushes. I am hopeful that we get some of the berries this time and not the critters.

 

The zucchini plants that I thought were goners seem to still be holding on.  I still haven’t seen any blooms, but they are getting bigger and their color is improving. 

The pot next to this bed is a complete goner.  I didn’t even take a picture of it, I figure you know what a pot of dirt looks like.

 

The cucumber vines are doing well. We have our first real cucumber growing on a vine. In case you can’t see it, our cucumber is against the stake behind the leaf.  (The baby one that I had in my last post never got any bigger.)

 

My tomato plants and my pepper plants are both thriving.  The grape tomato plants are growing like crazy and we joke that we don’t just have tomato plants, we have tomato trees.  We have been picking about 20 grape tomatoes twice a week.

 

We have our first tomatoes growing on our tomato plant.   (People who really know me will find it ironic that the one thing that is growing well in my garden is the tomatoes.  I don’t like tomatoes.)

 

My pepper plants.  We have our first banana pepper growing.  It is hard to see in the picture, but trust me it is there.  I can’t wait to have these on hand in the freezer for chili this winter. 

Please keep checking back for my gardening progress (or defeats). I am also linking this post to Frugal Gardening 101 series hosted by Phoebe, Connie and Amy. Check out what other gardeners are accomplishing!

~Ann

Update on my Summer Project–A Container Garden

Here is a link to my post last Saturday if you want to see the improvement and failure that has happened over the past week. 

This week was a big week for our little garden – we were able to pick lots of grape tomatoes and our first squash.  We also have our first few cucumbers beginning to grow.  The zucchini are starting to look a little better, but I still haven’t seen the the tiniest of zucchini starting to grow.  I am going to continue to watch them – and not give up. 

I wanted to start off with a picture that my baby sitter, Sarah, took of Natalie & Michael checking out the garden this past week.  Megan was still taking a nap when we walked out to pick out a few tomatoes. 

Michael is 10 months old.  Natalie just turned 5&1/2 this week – and lost her first tooth!

Now onto my plants’  progress:

My pepper plants – they look like they are just getting taller.

The grape tomatoes are doing really well.  We picked about 20 off of the two plants this week.  The tomato plant is starting to bloom, so hopefully we will have some tomatoes from that in a few weeks.

The strawberry bushes have been producing what appear to be sweet juicy strawberries.  We haven’t been able to enjoy them, critters are eating them for us.

My squash are doing great.  I think the spray that I used last week has really helped.  I picked two squash this morning, and I see a few small ones that should be ready next week.

The squash I picked this morning, I can’t wait to cook them for dinner tonight!

The zucchini and cucumber bed.  The zucchini seem to be doing better this week after I sprayed them last week.  I still haven’t seen any signs of baby zucchini.  I did find a few baby cucumbers growing on a few of the vines.

 

One of my baby cucumbers (the width of the frame is only 2 inches, so it really is small)

The pot that isn’t doing well.  The cucumber plant is the only thing still alive in the pot.  The squash and the zucchini have both died.  I don’t think they “play well with each other”  I probably should have planted them separately. 

 

Please keep checking back for my gardening progress (or defeat).  I am also linking this post to Frugal Gardening 101 series hosted by Phoebe, Connie and Amy.   Check out what other gardeners are accomplishing!

~Ann

Update on my Summer Project–A Container Garden

We were out of town for a week, but I came home to a thriving garden.  I couldn’t believe how big my squash plants had grown!   This post has pictures of what my garden looked like two weeks ago (the day we left for vacation) if you want to see how far I have come. 

My butternut squash (on the left) and my yellow squash!

Update on My Summer Project– A Container Garden

I took some pictures this past Saturday when my garden was 2 weeks old.  I went to use the digital cameras but I couldn’t find one Steve had them both packed up.  So, please excuse the quality of the pictures they were taken with my iPhone. 

My yellow squash are looking really good and my butternut squash have sprouted.  We added a sprinkler to keep them watered because of the high temperatures we had last week.

My “leftovers” pot.  These are the single plants that didn’t fit in the boxes Steve built so I am trying them in a pot.  There is one yellow squash, one cucumber, and one zucchini.

My cucumbers on the left and zucchini are on the right.  They look like they are doing well.

My strawberry plants.  I think it is actually chipmunks eating all of our fruit.  I have given up on the thought of eating only our homegrown strawberries this summer.

My banana pepper plants in the front and my two grape tomato plants are on the left and my single tomato plant is on the right.  The grape tomato plants has small green tomatoes on it, so hopefully in the next week or so we will have our first harvest. 

I am planning on trying to take pictures once a week, so keep checking back for the progress or struggles of my first attempt at gardening.

~Ann

PS – I found a gardening series that I have linked this post to -  Frugal Gardening 101 series hosted by Phoebe, Connie and Amy. Check it out!

My Summer Project–A Container Garden

Last summer I decided that it would be fun to have a small container garden.  I thankfully realized it was not the right time for me to try it out since I was expecting Michael to arrive in the middle of August.  I kept the thought planted in my mind (pun intended) and talked about it occasionally during the winter with Steve. 

I have never considered myself to have a green thumb or to really enjoy digging in the dirt.  However, I decided to try a garden for a few reasons.  The first is that I do think it is important that my children understand how we really get our food.  It doesn’t just magically appear in a grocery store.  I wanted to see if it would be more economical for me to grow some of my favorite summer produce like yellow squash, zucchini, and cucumbers.  I don’t like tomatoes, but I do have a tomato plant and two grape tomato plants for Steve and the girls to enjoy.  I also thought it would be a fun project for the girls and I to have this summer.  The girls love the PBS Show Sid the Science Kid and are always talking about making scientific observations.  What better way to make observations than to watch our seeds grow, our plants produce fruits and vegetables, and to harvest them ourselves.

I did some on-line research and talked to several people about what I should try to plant and the best approach.  We decided on three 3X3X12 planters.  We went to Lowe’s and had them cut the wood.  Steve put them together for me.  We bought the soil at Lowe’s because they had a special on it that weekend and the plants at Strange’s, a local greenhouse and garden center. We also bought two large pots to place on our patio. 

This is what it looked like when we planted everything last Saturday (with a special thanks to my photographer Natalie):

One of our planter boxes.  The area that they are in has a slope so we made an attempt to level the ground out underneath them as much as possible.

We filled them about 3/4 of the way with topsoil then covered them with landscape cloth to try to keep “critters” from coming up and getting our plants.  (We probably should have used a layer of wire mesh at the bottom but we didn’t.  I think the squirrels are going to be more of a problem.  Any tips?)

I cut out areas to plant the plants through the landscape cloth.  This bed has yellow squash and the holes are where I planted seeds for butternut squash. We did cover the cloth with a very light layer of soil.  (My photographer had gotten bored at that point and I didn’t get a picture.)

My strawberry plants in a pot.  They have produced a few berries, but I think either squirrels or birds are eating them.  Any advice?

The final census of what we planted in our garden are 7 cucumber plants, 8 zucchini plants, 8 yellow squash plants, 4 banana pepper plants, 1 tomato plant, 2 grape tomato plants, 2 strawberry plants, and seeds for at least 3 butternut squash.

I’ll try my best to keep you posted on my progress and the trial and error of attempting my first garden. 

~Ann

Double Your Money Back Guarantee at MARTIN’S

 

 

I noticed the logo and motto in various areas of the sales flyer, but I found out more info about the program this morning.

I decided that I wanted to make more strawberry jam.  We gave away several jars to friends, family, and Natalie’s preschool teachers in addition to finishing off several of them ourselves.  It was not going to work out for us to go to strawberry picking or back to the farmer’s market so I decided I would pick-up some organic strawberries while we were in MARTIN’S on Tuesday.  I got four quarts (or 1 pound packages) for $3.99 each.  (I know they are only $2.50 each at Kroger this week.)  Of course it didn’t work out for us to make the strawberry jam on Tuesday and I was going to work on it Wednesday afternoon.  That didn’t happen either.  I looked at the strawberries Wednesday night, along with a package of raspberries I had picked up and noticed mold growing on two of the packages of strawberries and on the raspberries.   I took the two bad containers of strawberries and the raspberries back to MARTIN’S this morning.

I found out today that essentially all perishable items are items that qualify for the double your money back guarantee.  I got double my money back on the raspberries and the strawberries (making the 2 that didn’t go bad free).  Last week I got double my money back on a London Broil that had gone bad in my refrigerator before the sell-by date.

I do want to emphasize that I would not intentionally take advantage of this program.  I would like to think that strawberries or raspberries can survive for a day after I purchase them.  I also wouldn’t have returned them if I thought I had done something to make them go bad faster like leave them in a hot car for two days.  I would like to think that others would also do the same and be honest.  This is a great program, just don't take advantage of it or we may lose it. 

One last thing – they do scan your bonus card to give you the refund so there is tracking in what you buy and return.  You also don’t want to be the crazy person that returns everything.  I remember being in line behind a lady in Ukrop’s who returned sour cream because she thought it smelled sour.  They know that, that is why it is called “sour” cream.  :)

~Ann

Making Strawberry Jam

This past Fall I had two posts about learning how to make and can my own applesauce and apple butter.  If you want to re-live my journey here and here are the links.  I realized that canning really isn’t that hard, it just takes some time.  I also learned that the time and effort involved is well worth it when you get to enjoy the final product. 

With Spring fruits now available I figured what better way to try my hand at canning again than with strawberry jam.  I did the research on-line and found several different places that we could go to locally pick our own strawberries.  Unfortunately, the day that the weather worked out for us was the day I had to work.  Steve, being the great and fun dad that he is took the girls with some friends of ours.  I was really bummed that I missed out on the fun.  They came home with lots of strawberries.  Natalie especially was very excited about making jam with the strawberries that she helped to pick.  I had to work the next day also and made sure that before I came home from work that I had all the supplies so that we could spend the following day making jam.  I came home and the flat of strawberries were sitting outside on the ground.  I asked Steve why and he explained to me that the entire flat was rotten and had started to grow mold.  Yuck!  (Natalie actually noticed if when she got up from her nap and told Steve that the strawberries had cotton on them.)

It was cold and rainy for the next 2 days so the girls and I couldn’t go pick more strawberries.  I did some more research on-line and found out that there is a Farmer’s Market near us on Wednesday afternoons.  The girls and I went to visit and came home with 4 quarts of strawberries from Agriberry.  A local farm that is a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). 

Here is a picture of the strawberries we purchased:

Yes – they were as yummy as they look!

 

I had helpers with mashing the berries for the jam.  Can you believe I forgot to take a picture?!?!?

Here is a picture of one of my helpers (along with her favorite bear Radar) and some of our finished product:

We actually ended up make 16 8-oz (half-pint) jars.  I gave several away as end of the year gifts for Natalie’s teachers at preschool, we enjoyed one ourselves, and I took one to Bible Study this morning with a loaf of Ukrop’s English Muffin bread I picked up at Martin’s this morning.  Yum!

The jam was so easy to make, and taste so yummy that I am actually contemplating going out to a berry patch again this weekend so we can make more for ourselves and gifts throughout the year.

Are any of you experienced canners?  What is your favorite thing to can?  Do you keep it all for your family or do you share it as gifts?  How do you determine how much to can to save for a year?