My Green Thumb Grows!

The garden is coming along. I haven't killed everything...yet. The tomato plants are getting big! They grow day-by-day, and every morning I am amazed at how much bigger they are than the day before.


This little tomato is a little odd!

There are lots of tomaters just waiting to taunt my imagination with future meals!


And this little guy is even showing me a little color...

The mangoes continue to develop...

Today I found this on my eggplant...

Looks like an assassin bug of some sort, and is very reminiscent of this monster that Woodrow picked up the other day when we were at my aunt's house...


I also have lots of these little garden protectors...
Lizards are all over the place down here. I love them.

One thing I am not as fond of are the lubbers. I have TONS of lubbers that hatched this year. I'm not sure why. Maybe it was related to the wet dry season that we had this year. I don't know. All I do know is that they are everywhere, in all sizes.


I've worried about my vegetable garden, but so far there haven't been any problems. I've seen damage to my sheffelera, but I intend to get rid of that anyway. So I'm okay with that. But the last couple of days, I have found that something seems to be taken with my cucumber plant.

And I've been noticing lately that my loquat is getting eaten up, but wasn't sure what was doing it...
Well, the other day I finally spotted the culprits.
That would be three Little Leaf Notcher Weevils stacked on top of one another. These guys are really eating up my loquat.

I'm trying to do an organic yard without the use of pesticides, but I may wind up having to do something here.

The veggies are growing well. Remember this shot? This was taken when I first planted the garden on May 2 (19 days ago).
Boy how my garden grows! (Just call me Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary!)

The cantaloupe is taking over...

I see now why you are supposed to plant them with perhaps 4-6 feet between them and other plants...

...as the cantaloupe is latching on and strangling my pepper plants and eggplants surrounding it.


The zucchini plant is really growing.

The leaves on it are HUGE!

And it has tons of blossoms coming in.

The cucumber also has blooms...

I got a strawberry off of my strawberry plant from last year.

One tiny little berry...

I said that if it was really sweet and good, I would have to buy more plants to grow more berries...


...I think I'll pass on the strawberries for now.

My First Vegetable Garden

Well, I've got me a little garden going! A few months ago, I mentioned that I was covering the raised bed with a tarp in hopes of killing the weeds and weed seeds. Well, it did a pretty good job. We scooped up the dead grass from the top of the bed and threw it in the compost heap and horticulture bin.


Then we scooped out a bunch of the top layer in a quarter section of the bed, so that I could plant a small vegetable garden. We mixed in compost, potting soil and top soil. I planted a poblano pepper, jalapeno pepper, green bell pepper, cucumber, watermelon, zucchini, 2 eggplant and cantaloupe.

So far, everything is looking good.

I also potted an herb bucket, and I planted a Rome tomato plant and sweet basil in another bucket.
My tomato is growing like gangbusters, and already has a small tomato coming in.


And there are tons of new blooms that foretell of more tomatoes to come.



I noticed the other day that the strawberry pot that I had last summer has a couple of plants still going in it, and one has even sprung up a couple of little strawberries.


I also had an old pepper plant from last year that I had given up on and forgotten over the winter, and just noticed the other day that it has 3 peppers coming in on it.


Even my mango tree is trying to put out a little something, despite the freezes that hit it hard this winter. I've spotted 3 small mangoes so far.

So that's my small attempt right now at growing my own food. I'm just sort of testing the waters right now. We'll see how it goes, and I'll share what I may learn.