Growing a green thumb

The past few years we have been slowly expanding our garden. Years ago we had a few pots with tomatoes and peppers on the back deck, then the next year our pots grew bigger, then we made a raised garden box so that we could grow a few more things.
This year we're going to make 2 more raised garden boxes so we can expand even more because we're having so much fun!
I decided to be ambitious, and frugal, this year and start as many of our plants from seed, so we needed to start early to get more growing time.
Since this spring came early and warm, we had luck right from the start with our seeds!

March 9th
Simeon, Ammon and Rebecca planted sweet peas, pumpkins and tomatoes.



Within days we have little pea and pumpkin sprouts. The tomatoes took a little longer to start coming up.
The containers got funky being in the house like the directions said to do, so we started taking them outside during the day to help dry them out some and prevent more funky stuff on the pots. It helped stop any new funk from starting.

March 18th
Just 9 days later and the peas and pumpkins were already an inch tall! They were starting to shoot roots out the bottom of their containers.



Mrach 19th
The girls had so much fun transplanting the peas and pumpkins into to their bigger temporary home. Their roots were all over the outside of their pots.



March 26th
The peas weren't doing so good in their pots. The potting soil was drying out to quickly and they were starting to get too droopy each afternoon. They got moved to the permanent home in the the garden. Within hours one of the plants had already attached it little green vine to the support lines strung for them!
The pumpkins stayed in their pots because it was still early from them to go in the ground.

April 1st
Today we planted another 2 rows of peas directly into the garden. We're hopeful that they will do as well as the first batch we planted.

Ammon took this picture of me putting up the support line above the new pea seeds we planted tonight. You can see the green onions growing nice and tall in this picture. Last year these were as thin as a blade of grass. This year they are already so thick and tall.

We are loving watching the process from little dry seed, to sprout, to leaves and growth and spilling out of the pots growth! We're excited to see what these plants will produce this summer. We're thinking that we might even try to save some seeds from our crops to grow next years crop.

It's been just less then a month and we have so much growth from these little seeds. It's really helped build our confidence in our growing green thumbs that we have so much growth already! Now I know why my dad loved growing a garden so much. I find myself going out and checking on the plants more often the kids do!

In a few months I may be rethinking the idea of having so many pumpkin plants growing in our yard!!

Tomatoes

Our cherry tomato plant is STILL covered in tomatoes of all shades from dark green to bright red.

Today I picked a whole bowl full of them and there is probably another 2 bowls full of tomatoes still on the plant.

Rebecca thinks these little tomatoes are candy. She pops them one after the other!




I love the bright red against the green leaves and vines.

Look what we found!

Remember back at the beginning of the summer when my sweet Ammon wanted to plant a pumpkin for Halloween. He picked out a baby bear pumpkin plant and planted it, watered it, weeded (somewhat willingly) and checked on it so lovingly.




All summer long we have been watching the vine grow, orange flowers bloom, and a little green pumpkin start to grow, then watched it fall off and turn brown. The vine grew and grew all summer and the flowers were coming by the handfuls, but no little pumpkins.

Then came Sept 30th. I was talking to my sister Lisa in Idaho on the phone. It was a beautiful warm fall day, so I was sitting outside talking to her. She was telling me about their pumpkins that her kids grew this summer. I thought I should go check on ours to see if the vine had made it to the front of the house.

That was when I saw this...


Just weeks earlier we had looked all over the vine, but hadn't seen any pumpkins. But there it was hidden underneath some hostas that had started to die back from the cooler nights.

That afternoon when Ammon got home from school I told him I had a surprise for him after he got his chores done. He hurried and got everything done so that he could find out the surprise. He was so excited to see that he had indeed grown a pumpkin. It was mostly orange with some green streaks on it.

The vine took off this summer. We had to keep pushing it back into the planter box so we could mow around it. It wound it's way around the fireplace and started heading towards the front yard, but stopped just short of turning the front corner of the house. The other end went towards the back yard. It caught hold of the bush on that side of the yard and grew up into the bush. It's really pretty to see the orange pumpkin flowers blooming amid the leaves in the bush.




Today we checked on it and it was completely orange and ready to be cut off the vine. Ammon finished up his raking real quick so that he could cut it off. What excitement there was for Ammon to be holding his very 1st homegrown pumpkin!!




He set it with the pumpkins they picked out last week. It looks so small compared to the others, but to him it's the greatest thing!

Our Garden

Wow is all we can say about our tomato plants this year. Wow is because at the beginning of August it was taller then Corrine, and now in September it's taller then me and 4+ feet across. It's so big and heavy that we had to get a big wire stand to help hold the weight of the plant up. It's produced a few hundred little red cherry tomatoes and it has a bunch more flowers on it! We pick cup fulls at a time and give them away, then do it again a few days later.
Rebecca LOVES them and she knows which ones are ripe and ready to eat. She'll go over pick one, take the green top off and pop it in her mouth. They are like candy to her!





This is the 1st year having our garden in the raised planter box Johann made last year. Since we took out our tree we now have sun in our entire backyard. Before we only had sun on our deck, so we planted bell peppers and tomatoes in pots up there. Because they were in pots we had problem regulating the water and we ended up with so much tomato rot from the pot going from wet to dry too often. This year we so far haven't had any problems with rot, but we also have a different smaller variety of tomato.
We planted garden salsa peppers because I wasn't able to find bell peppers plants. So far the peppers are long and skinny. They are suppose to get red before they are ripe. We ended with 16 peppers on 3 different plants. These babies are HOT, not mild like they said they should be. A small bit of one had enough flavor to burn our mouths in an entire dish. YIKES-not what we wanted! Next year we'll stick with bell peppers of all colors.


We also have 2 strawberry plants that didn't produce this year, but they have a few shoots going off. Also some thing happened with our raspberry plants. We had 7 or 8 planted last year, with one planted at the beginning and producing great, but this year that good producer along with the other 5 didn't grow. Only one has grown about 5 inches tall with no fruit. Not sure what happened there. We're hoping to get some more shoots again this summer and try again next year.
Grandma Smith gave the kids a soda bottle bird feeder for the backyard at the beginning of the summer. A few weeks ago I was pulling out the hostas behind the deck to get it ready to plant grass, (since hostas like shade, and we no longer have that). I starting pulling what I thought was tall grass. One of them was harder to pull out then it should have been and that was when I realized it wasn't grass I was pulling, but corn stalks. We have a bunch of corn stalks growing under the bird feeder that obviously had corn in it. We have also found a few smaller corn stalks trying to come up in the yard. We decided that the corn could stay this year, but next year this area would become grass, and we'd plant sweet corn on the side of the house since we know it will grow in our yard.


Ammon's pumpkin plant is all vine. It had one small pumpkin on it about the size of a gumball, but it fell off. Since then we have had alot of growth with the vine and some flowers, but no more pumpkins. The vine goes around the chimney and almost reaches to the front of the house.

I though I'd put one last picture up of the Green Monster that lives next door, but loves to come over into our yard. Corrine is as tall as the fence and the Green Monster towers over her. We cut our side back just so the kids can play on the play structure and Johann can mow. I cut down the taller trees that grow in it so they don't get the lines above. It creates a nice natural barrier, but it is pretty out of control!

All about Ammon

I was looking through my pictures and realized that I had so many pictures of Ammon at different things that I wanted to share, so I decided to put them into one post all about Ammon. I love this little man of mine. He has been giving the best hugs and kisses lately. He'll go totally out of his way to give me a hug and kiss and I'm absolutely loving it!! I want this stage to last forever!

At Ammon's last soccer practice for the season he received a medal!! He was super excited about his medal. They had a small party with Popsicles after practice.


This year (fall & spring) was Ammon's 1st time playing soccer and he really liked it. He started to figure it out the longer they played. He had some good friends on the team, so some times during the game we needed to remind him to play not talk!!
During his last first game in the fall and his last game in the spring game he scored goals!



While we watched Corrine's games, Rebecca and Ammon would go off and play. To say they are sweet together doesn't do it justice. Rebecca absolutely, positively, LOVES Ammon so much x 1,000. That may be getting closer to it. She follows him around, copying him and showing off for him. Who needs toys and playgrounds when these 2 are together. The umbrella's were instant toys for these two, and a few puppies rides are always needed during the games.







Ammon and Rebecca were my helpers one afternoon as we picked out flowers. Ammon saw a pumpkin plant and wanted to get it so bad. I wasn't sure where a pumpkin would work in our yard, but his sweet face convinced me to get it and figure out a spot for it later. We decided that a bare spot (that was suppose to get filled in with hostas) on the side of the house would be it's new home. He pulled the weeds from the area with me, then lovingly planted his pumpkin. It's a "Baby Bear" plant, and the pumpkins are only suppose to grow to be 4lbs.


Johann, Rebecca and I went up to school to have lunch with the kids. It was a special day so the kids were eating their lunches outside. When we got outside Ammon was sitting with his friends way up on a play structure. As soon as he saw us he gave us a big wave, and made his way down to sit with us.

One last look at Ammon. He brought this home from school last week. It's all about Ammon, done by Ammon. Under every picture is another picture similar to the top one, except on his self portrait. I love the way he draws himself, so I had to include both of them.



The sections are:
This is what I look like
My Family
His favorite place to be is: Home
What he wants to be when he grows up: An Army man
My favorite things to do: play soccer
If I could have one wish it wold be: for an octopus

Not sure where wishing for octopus came from, but it's just like Ammon to put something like that!!

Seriously I love this kiddo so much. He keeps me on my toes daily. There are times I'm so hoping he'll grow up and out of some phases he's in and so many other times I'll keep him my little guy who loves to sleep, hates getting dressed if it means he'll cuddle with me, give me hugs and kisses and tells me how much he loves me a dozen times a day.