My Green Thumb...

I can grow weeds like nobody's business. Remember my grand plans for my garden this year? Remember how I wanted to do some canning and pickling? Well, I've adjusted my hopes and dreams. Now I'm just looking to harvest something- ANYTHING. Actually, my leaf lettuce is fantastic. In fact, as I was planting it, the wind blew seeds all over my garden so there are tufts of leaf lettuce all over the place. My tomato plants are coming along, though I ended up planting half as many as I had planned. See, I had started tomato plants myself, from wee little seeds. The last time I did this I had such a fantastic crop I had more than I knew what to do with. This time? Not a single one survived. So I had to go buy plants. They are fairly expensive. I did not like it. So, fewer plants. I planted 5 hills of cucumbers, hoping to get at least enough to try one batch of pickles. Three hills came up. The plants are still pretty small, though they are beginning to flower. I planted 3 pepper plants. I have one golfball size pepper so far. My onions are slowly coming. They are maybe 6 inches high and as thick as thick spaghetti. I planted one row of carrots for fun, for the kids. Kennedy, bless her heart, decided to help me out by weeding for me. She pulled up half the row of carrots, thinking they were weeds. Kennedy's cabbage she started at school seems to be doing pretty well. It has lots of big leaves, anyway. And then my beans. I really wanted beans. I wanted to can beans. I planted three poles of beans. Probably not enough to can, but whatever. They started to come up, one or two of them, and then died. Nothing else came up. So in a last ditch effort, I replanted beans just before we left on vacation. I sprayed for bugs first, ( I think it was cutworms that got 'em), and replanted 4 or 5 seeds at each pole, and several rows of bush beans where I had extra room, you know, where my tomatoes didn't get planted and my cucumbers didn't come up. I still have hope for the beans. They are coming on pretty well now. Maybe I can do one canner full?

I have learned a thing or two for next year. 1. Amend the soil. Manure, baby, it does wonders. 2. Plant earlier. 3. Start only tomatoes in the starter box. Or at least things that germinate at the same speed. 4. Build a higher fence.