Volunteers

Every year in Dad's garden he would have "volunteers" come up. He was the first person I ever heard refer to self seeded plants as volunteers. I've since heard just about every gardener use that term.  When I was young I thought that he was so clever for coming up with that......but maybe it's been around a while. In my mind anyway, he gets full credit. Up above is a lettuce volunteer next to some scallions.  We didn't plant any lettuce seeds at all so these are seeds that dropped from the last garden and germinated by themselves.

Here is a tomato plant that volunteered to sprout on it's own. I'm quick to pluck these guys out though because I read that the fruit is not great from a tomato that's come up like this. Not sure if there's any truth to that, but since space is an issue in my little raised beds, it had to go.

More lettuce of  a different variety. These I'll let grow because they happened to come up in an area that's not a space issue.

Garden Update - Couple Weeks Ago

 I'm a little behind on the posting, so this was the garden a few weeks ago.   I remember aiming for March 17 as my planting date but I'm pretty sure that didn't happen. I'm not quite sure how old the garden is, maybe 4 weeks total?   So let's say this was the garden at 2 weeks old. In the top pic you can see the pickling cucumbers starting to go up the trellis and some seeds coming up. Boy those scallions look scrawny!

 This box has the strawberries on the far end with the lemon cucumbers. I over seeded the cukes and I think every single one germinated. I probably should thin them out but I hate doing that, if it sprouted, I wanna give it a chance. I may regret that when the bugs and diseases start running rampant and everything s packed so close together. 

 Speaking of bugs, something has been nibbling on the eggplant already. A little leafminer damage as well, that's the white wiggly lines.

Here are the lemon cukes. Surprisingly hardy with thick sturdy stems in such young plants. The regular pickling cukes are usually falling all over themselves at this height.  Lookin' good!

And of course the marigolds that I started myself from seed. Saved $10.00 by saving my own seeds and starting them on my own. Marigolds are SUPER easy and well worth doing yourself. Interestingly, I loved the flowers that had an orange center and dark red/orange border so I only saved seeds from those specific flowers. And look what I got, everything but the one I saved! 

In the Ground

This post is a little behind seeing as the plants have been in the ground a few weeks now. Oops! Just wait till I post an update because these little bitty plants and seeds have been growing like gang busters!

 Along this trellis I planted a few lemon cucumber seeds. I planted quite a few in the hopes that at least a decent amount of plants come up.

 Here's the gypsy pepper, we planted 3 of them. They'll grow into smaller sized bell peppers but not as mini as the yummy peppers last time.

 Wilty little eggplant, we planted 2 of 'em. I planted the Japanese type so that we'll get a few smaller vegetables instead of one or two big ones.

Here's a regular old green cucumber, can't wait to make more pickles!

Since the Big Beef was good to us in the last garden, we planted one of them again. I considered other varieties (and there are tons out there) but I'll stick with the tried and true for now. I only planted one since we were bombarded with the crop from 3 plants last time. 

Hot banana peppers, 3 of them! Can't wait!  I'm gonna can up a bunch of these in a brine and try to make my own banana pepper rings.  We love that spicy, vinegary flavor.

 An old stand by is the jalapeno, i planted 3 of those too.   We canned up a bunch of these to make pickled jalapeno slices and we'll probably do the same with this crop.

Hot cherry peppers. This was my "something new" for the garden this time around.  I have plans to stuff these little babies with some cheese and broil them in olive oil to make an appetizer. That spicy oil for dipping bread into is won.der.ful.

Oh well, I lied, there are a few "something new's" in the garden!  Here are some onion sets we're trying out. I don't plan to really get any  big onions out of these, I think it's even the wrong time of year for them but we eat tons of green onions/scallions and these will do just fine for that.

Next to the onions are some seeds. There are 2 rows of scallion seeds and three rows of carrots. The plan is that the onion sets will have a  head start then the scallion seeds will grow and make a second harvest. Each row of carrots is a different kind, even a purple one! Woo Hoo!

I've Got the Good Stuff

 Since we used the county compost to fill the boxes, we thought a little extra of the good stuff would give us a leg up on the next growing season. We've got mushroom compost....

 Composted cow manure....

 and earthworm castings (worm poop).  Three kinds of poop should just about do it. Each one brings it's own brand of beneficial bacteria and fertilizer to the party.

 Here are the plants! We've got 1 Big Beef tomato, 2 sweet 100 cherry tomatoes, 3 jalapenos, 3 hot banana peppers, 3 gypsy sweet bell peppers (small variety of bell pepper), 2 Japanese eggplant, 2 hot cherry peppers, onion sets and seeds, 2 cucumbers, lemon cucumber seeds, carrot seeds and a few ground cherry plants I started from seeds. Can't wait!