Garden Planted for Fall Season

We pulled up most of what was left in the garden back in mid-August and then began planting for the fall season.  The only plants we purposely kept were the Basil and Greek Oregano.  We also ended up with Chocolate Mint coming back up, which is good because we could not find any sort of mint to buy and replant like I wanted.  However, it is growing around the base of the oregano, so we kind of have an odd almost hybrid mint oregano plant (see below).

 

Today I planted the tomatoes and the stevia plants we bought as the final things to plant in our garden for the fall season.  The other things we planted from seed back in August.  We planted Snap Beans, Broccoli, Carrots, Cucumbers, Dill, and Sage.  Everything, except the Sage (planted from old seeds we had around and did not really expect them to grow), has already started coming up.

Our Garden's First Watermelon

Yesterday, I harvested the first watermelon from our garden.  It seemed ready to pick, as it looked right, sounded right, and seemed to have stopped growing for the past week.  Well, it ended up being pink inside and not quite ripe.  It did at least still taste a little like a watermelon and was not bitter, but it also was not sweet at all.  Oh well, we still have almost ten at various stages of growing, so maybe I will figure out when they are ready for at least one of them.

1st Okra Harvest

Just Friday all the okra that had gotten close to ready to harvest had been destroyed by ants, but yesterday when I went out to pick tomatoes I ended up finding some pretty large okra.  I ended up harvesting quite a several big ones and a few regular picking size.  Since we leave for our first summer vacation early Friday and the kitchen is a disaster, there will be no cooking with them now, but I cut them up and froze them for use later.

Mik in our garden for 1st time

Mik was involved in the garden project as he helped pick out what to plant, but until today he had never actually been out to see it.  Tonight for the solar eclipse we already had brought the wheelchair down the steps to the backyard, so it was not too much more to go over the railroad ties to get out to the garden.  He enjoyed seeing everything we had planted and we even found 7 cherry tomatoes ready to pick and eat (yeah, only one made it back into the house!).

Today's Garden Harvest

Our garden is producing quite a lot of tomatoes.  The picture is of today's harvest, but it has been about that many every time I go out there to harvest (usually every 2 to 3 days).  Today the two strawberries were also very ripe.

I would have thought there would have been some okra by now, but the biggest I see now is smaller than the biggest last week and no I did not pick that one.  The ants seem to be eating the okra.  The rhubarb is the plant they are totally crawling all over all the time and eating the leaves of, but they are not even touching the strawberries which are one of the plants between the okra and the rhubarb.

Trying to figure out how to get rid of the ants, but at the same time not really going to try anything too major since the rhubarb is still thriving as is the rest of the garden and I could live without the okra if the ants keep eating all them.

My Spoon Garden Markers

The 2nd attempt of just painting the paint on the spoons proved successful, although they may or may not survive the outdoor weather.  The point was to make the garden markers only using things I had around the house and something to weather proof them was not, so next spring I may weatherproof them and possibly have to redo them.

Materials Used:

• Spare Spoons
• White Indoor Wall Paint (why they might not do well outdoors!)
• Sharpies for the writing and drawings

Basil Spoon Garden Marker



Chocolate Mint Spoon Garden Marker



Cucumber Spoon Garden Marker

Dill Spoon Garden Marker

Greek Oregano Spoon Garden Marker

Lemon Balm Spoon Garden Marker

Okra Spoon Garden Marker

Rhubarb Spoon Garden Marker

Strawberries Spoon Garden Marker

Tomatoes Spoon Garden Marker

  

Watermelon Spoon Garden Marker

First Attempt at Spoon Garden Markers

I have been wanting to make markers for the plants in our garden since we planted it back in February, but was not sure what to use.  Last weekend I learned about turning spoons into garden markers and thought it would be great to try, especially since we had quite a few more spoons than we really need.

I did not really follow the directions I had seen, as they recommended mod podge and other stuff I did not have around the house.  What I did have, though, was a container with some of the white paint for finishing the edging in my room.

In my first attempt to turn the spoons into garden markers, I was quite lazy and decided to just dip the spoons in the paint.  I did let some of the paint drip off, but I really was going for quick and did not really let enough drip off.  Thus, I ended up with them not really drying all the way through and the back of the spoon ended up with a spot not covered or still wet where it was resting on the wax paper.  This was after drying overnight.

I ended up easily rinsing off the paint and picking off the rest.  Next up I am going to just paint them with a paintbrush, so I do not end up with the pools of paint accumulating in the concave part of the spoon.

While it did not work out so well, as rushing a project usually does not, but I did make a cool video of dipping the spoons.