Chicago: Growin, growin, growin keep that garden growin, raw-hide

Sorry I have been off the map these past couple weeks. I don't really have much excuse since I'm just sitting at home applying for work, but let's pretend I've been really busy and just couldn't get away to update the blog.

So I have finally graduated! And passed my RD exam! And am officially unemployed, but hopefully only for a short time. Can't wait to join the working world. It finally just sunk in that I am done with school which means no homework, or thesis, or studying. That is just glorious.

The Marigolds are blooming!

Speaking of glorious, take a look at how my veggies are doing! We have been getting a lot of rain lately which the plants have loved so a lot of growth has sprung up. I was worried for a little bit that my little, tiny transplants wouldn't make it because they were so small. Sometimes I forget that I nurtured these plants from tiny seeds.

Yummy lettuce.

The strawberry plant has blooms!! Yay!

Bean plant!

 Look how big the Roma tomato plant is!  This guy is just flourishing. I feel like this one gets bigger every day.

 

There are also some zucchinis on the zucchini plant.

 

Look how funny this one grew. Weird...

And don't worry Dina- this is as big as my oregano is and I planted it at the same time as my Roma tomato!

Geez oregano, you are so lame.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seattle- Coming Home to a Surprise

I spent the weekend in Chicago to see Devon graduate (yay, Devie!) and left my plants to the Seattle weather Gods. And what happened? Total awesomeness! Apparently I just need to leave my plants alone.

Spinach Take II, looking healthier right?

And remember the transplants kindergarten-style? They are kickin'!! I should clarify. The oregano looks ok but no bigger. It's a slow plant, according to Devon. The basil looks great.

Basil babies

The lettuce is coming back for another harvest

And the most exciting? Thyme! It's already blossomed! So exciting! 

Thyme

With the aphid infestation behind me I'm just thrilled at how hardy mint is. Delicious and it looks so healthy.

Mint plant thriving

The catnip is flourishing!

Maybe what I need is just to not look at the plants for a few days and I'll be surprised. Well here's hoping! A long four day drive from SoCal to Seattle to bring my fiance home!!! It may be awhile until the next post. Hopefully it isn't all about dead plants when I get back. Wait and see!

Seattle- Crisis Averted

Ok. I'm pretty sure the infestation crisis has been averted. After much research I determined the mint was infested with aphids. That super sucks. They say that you can squirt them with water and they'll just slip off but with all of the articles and other blog posts I read through they all said if you had an infestation as bad as mine (as in millions of bugs) you just have to gut the plant ensuring those bugs don't get full and move on to your other delectables. GUT THE PLANT?!!! Oh no! So I called Devon and whined about it and then gutted it. I then checked all of my other plants (no aphids, yay!) and mixed a water bottle of soapy water. Apparently this is a great fix to keep future aphids away.

Fun fact: When worried that you may get aphids look for ants heading to your plant. Aphids secrete a "honeydew nectar" that ants think is delicious! Ants will actually herd aphids like shepards to sheep in order to harvest their nectar to take back to the queen. Gotta love the internet! (and yes, I had ants about a week before this infestation). 

Luckily mint is an incredibly resilient plant. I wanted to try and preserve the roots hoping it would come back and look! I actually have new growth already!!

A tiny mint leaf coming back to life!

After ensuring there were no other aphids on any of the plants (a few days later by the way. I was scratching like I was infested for at least a day) and harvested the lettuce! I had a ton and really needed to eat it before it flowered. I made an amazing salad to eat with a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich. It had avocado and heirloom tomatoes on it and I ate it up, looked at my empty plate and OOPS! I forgot to take a picture! Well, trust me, it was delicious.

 Lettuce leaves after washing

Next project were the seeds that never worked, remember? Well the basil and the oregano sprouted! The chives just grew mold, so I'm not really sure how to get those started. I'm thinking of putting the few seeds left in to the freezer for a few days and then re-planting them. 

Cute little basil sprouts

But of course there are always problems. I got some little cups to plant the transplants in and every time I would grab for a sprout it would tear! It was as if the sprouts actually netted through the wet papertowel. But I am a creative girl, so I just tore the papertowl around a sprout and planted them together. :) 

 Basil sprout now transplanted stage I

And I lined the cups up on the dining room table to get some sun and continue to grow before I move them outside.

Three cups for basil and one for oregano

I know you've heard me complain about how amazing Devon's spinach is compared to mine. I'm 100% sure mine was stunted. It's been over a month now and this is it?!

 Yellowed spinach

So I ripped them all out, supplemented with new soil and re-planted. Hopefully these guys will be kickin'! And since I was working on that I also planted the thyme and zucchini. Can't wait to see these blossom. Also the cilantro is ready to eat! Good thing Matt will be home in 1.5 weeks to eat it!!!!

Chicago: Transplanting, at last!

Transplanting is complete! Finally the weather has turned a little warmer which means that all the baby plants went outside on Friday. We have quite a few pots out there this year. I can't wait until they all get bigger; it will be like a jungle out there. Part of me is afraid that the little plants won't survive but all we can do is wait and see.

Joe's mom gave us a new pot that is actually a big milk jug! We thought it would look good as a planter and drilled a few holes in the bottom. I planted the oregano in it so I can't wait til it starts growing up over the sides and spilling over.  And, guess what? We have our first zucchini flower!

This is the first bloom of the year! Looks like we might be getting some zucchinis soon! The weather was a bit harsh over Memorial Day weekend so a few of the transplants were hit hard. Luckily, nothing got singed that couldn't be remedied (sorry no pics of burnt basil leaves).

The big slicer tomato plant surrounded by its marigold guards.

Time to harvest some spinach!

 So I guess I planted my lettuce a little haphazardly because I seem to be getting clumps of lettuce with some bare spots in the planter. The unfortunate part is the lettuce seeds have disappeared so I can't fill in the planter with new lettuce. Oh well, hopefully these little areas will grow well and I won't need more lettuce. I wonder where that pack of seeds got off to???

Seattle- INFESTED!!!!

OH MY GOSH I HAVE BUGS!! I realize I just posted yesterday but how could I have missed this? I'll tell you how. About two weeks ago I noticed that my mint looked a little weepy. So I watered it. Next day it was gorgeous and had perked back up. About four days later, it looked weepy again. I knew that mint was pretty hardy, it shouldn't need this much water so I left it alone. And it looked better! And yesterday when I was taking pictures for the blog it looked good. But I just got home from church and I glance outside and it looks gross, even kind of dead in places.

My wilty, shriveled mint

So I take a closer look and see these little white threads all over the leaves. They can't be bugs, it looks like the plant was producing some sort of fuzz on the leaves as if it was under duress. But then I looked closer and wait, is that a bug? And then I found them. There must be thousands!!!

 All those little green dots on the stem? Those are individual bugs.

Well crap. So I sprung to work and filled up my spray bottle with soapy water. Oh, and I also sprayed all of my other plants and moved my gorgeous lettuce, after close inspection, far away from that stupid mint.

I am also now so full of the heeby-geebies that I am scratching involuntarily. Looks like I've got some research to do. I hope I can save the mint.

Seattle- Persevering

It's a GORGEOUS day here in Seattle! The sun is out despite weather reports of rain all weekend. My plants are so happy!! I can see them stretching toward the sun. But, even though they are all wonderful plants I'm still having some problems.

First off my spinach! I got spinach envy seeing Devon's huge leaves last week on the blog. I planted mine first!! They just aren't seeming to grow quickly at all. She can practically eat hers already and mine are teeny! Look at this, this one below is the largest in the bunch. The only thing I can think of is that the soil was incredibly saturated with water when I planted since it was winter and in Seattle that means nothing but rain. Maybe there's just too much moisture in there. I'm hoping sunny days like today help correct that. I'm watching them closely.

My pathetic little stunted spinach

Next off are those un-growing pots. Oregano. Basil. Chives. My friend Sara even said, "They should just grow for you because you're Italian. This is blasphemy!" I agree! So I took Devon's advice and went kindergarten style. I figure I'm pouting about it kindergarten style, I may as well act like it to. So, the remainder of the seeds went in to labeled (I'm learning!) baggies. I then placed them all in the sunniest spot in the apartment: on top of Matt's Wurley. 

A last resort

Let's hope this works!

The rest of the plants are doing so well. I guess there's not too much more room for complaint. Weirdly though I am seeing a difference between pots. For example, both of these pots below are cilantro. What is causing this difference?! I water them at the same times, I planted them at the same time. Did I forget to seed half of the pot? I don't think so. But regardless of this Matt was home to taste it last weekend and just about melted. He's super excited to start harvesting.

Cilantro, yes in both of those pots.

Biggest success? LETTUCE! It's ready to harvest!! It is just spilling out of the pot. Yummy! I see a salad in my immediate future.

Wowee lettuce!

And look at the amount of blueberry blossoms! We are going to have amazing berries this year. Yay! Matt was also excited to hear that. This is probably my favorite success this year, especially with what happened last year. This plant just looks amazing.

Beautiful blueberry blossoms

And though not edible my geranium is finding some time to blossom. I'm so excited! They tell you that you should pinch off all of the blossoms in order to keep the stress of blooming low priority when you transplant. So I did and am now being rewarded (finally) with blossoms! Can't wait to see how many this plant rewards me with.

A shocking pink geranium

And the catnip is really taking off. I may have to thin this one out too. It pretty much allows a single plant to take over if last year was any clue.

Catnip leaves

And finally the carrots. I have been systematically pulling out leaves as they get bigger to thin them. I don't want funky shaped carrots to sprout. Right?

Carrots are thinned properly now

So that's the garden. For those of you interested I have also started a crafting blog called "The Land of Crafts". Please feel free to follow. I figure, when I'm not in the garden on the patio I'm in the apartment sewing, knitting, or quilting. I figured you'd be interested in seeing it all. I think I finally found my niche.

Chicago Photo of the Week

Chicago: Weather Issues & Stowaways

What have we here? Stowaways! I'm afraid we barbeque and shish-kabob stowaways on this ship!

Look at those little stowaways in the zucchini's pot! How rude! These little sprouts just popped up. I wonder what they are? When I planted the zucchini I used half new soil and half old soil from last year so I'm guessing whatever was in the soil last year left a little present for my zucchini. How fun and interesting! As you can see the zucchini is growing so strong. He loves it outside and has really grown.

This past week I was getting prepared to transplant all my seedlings into their outdoor pots. I was hardening off my sprouts all week by taking them outside for 1 hour on Monday and gradually increased 1 hour of outdoor time per day until they were spending all day outside. I was just so excited to transplant on Saturday when the weather took a turn for the worse.

All week we were struggling not to turn the air conditioning on as it reached 85 degrees during the day and suddenly we were back to the 40s! Too cold for my baby plants. Unfortunately, it hasn't even been getting up to 55 degrees during the day so I had to bring in the zucchini and strawberry plant. They are so sad that they can't play outside anymore :(


Needless to say, this week has been way too cold for transplanting so the seedlings had to stay indoors. Now I am planning on transplanting this weekend. The weather should be turning warm again by Thursday so cross your fingers. I'm afraid if I keep these guys inside any longer they will be stunted and won't grow well. Hopefully, they will take to their new pots like the zucchini did and grow with vigor!

Carrots are getting bigger

Spinach going strong

Additionally, Joe and I picked out some flowers to start from seeds. Although I started them a little late a lot of them have already sprouted. You can see pictures of the ones we chose below.

Top row from left to right: Four O'Clock Marbles Mix, Blue Enchantment Convolvulus, Antique Shades Pansies
Bottom row from left to right: Magic Carpet Petunia, Four O'Clock High Tea mix, Peach Melba Nasturtium

I love the colors and I hope that starting these flowers from seeds will make them healthy and happy (not to mention its cheaper). I chose varieties that could tolerate full sun all day, had blooms for up to 10-12 weeks, and love the heat. Our deck gets A LOT of sun in the summer and I noticed that the geraniums could not take it last year, but the petunias thrived. Not all of the flowers have sprouted yet so I'm anxiously awaiting their sprouting.

One of the Four O'Clock sprouts

Also in case you are counting down, only 17 more days until I sit for the RD exam! I could be an RD for my birthday! Hooray.

Seattle- Starting to Get Worried

The weather here in Seattle has been quite unique this spring and that's the nice way to put it. I'm surprised the blueberries are doing as well as they are with the low temperatures we've had. Sidenote: all those blossoms mean berries this year!!! SO EXCITED!!! But anyways, back to the temperature. Those THREE pots still have not bloomed! I even dug through the dirt to look for teeny-sprouts and they're all a no go. I don't know what the problem is but I'm going to blame the weather. Hopefully if it gets warmer? Maybe I should move the pots around for better sun exposure? Hmmm...

On to wonderful things-- look at my luscious lettuce! It's getting so big, should be tasty soon. At least it loves this cool weather.

Lettuce sprouts galore.

And then of course it's just another pat on the back knowing my deduction of cilantro was correct. See the newest leaves? The jagged ones that look like cilantro leaves? Yeah, it's cilantro. I'm awesome.

100% Cilantro

And this one is how I know it's bad news bears that the other three pots haven't sprouted: Catnip. The last plant last year that I was worried would never sprout. That Devon made fun of me for? Yeah, it's sprouting at full force. I guess that's still pretty exciting.

Catnip for my cat to nip (I know that was bad).

And of course my spinach now looks like Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors, doesn't it? A slow growth but sure.

Spinach sprout heading to the sun.

And of course the carrots. I thinned them proper this time, though probably soon will need a little more. The leaves are changing as well which is exciting. It's like the next step!

Look how much I pulled! For shame!

A properly thinned pot now. Still some serious grouping.

I am now obsessive about watching those three pots. I may have to take Devon's advice and start over by starting my sprouts kindergarten style: the plastic baggie. We'll see. I'm still convinced they're coming. And in just a couple weeks I get to plant the zucchini and oregano! Keep an eye right here!