Thursday, May 20, 2010

I'M A FARMER!

Ladies and gentlemen...our first bountiful harvest of snow peas, minus the 6 we already ate.










Everything is growing right now! This is our first real garden, so I try to just look at it as a big science experiment. If things grow, great. If they don't, then at least they are making the soil better for next year, right? I can't help but get excited when I see the progress though. I've become a bit obsessive about checking to see how it's doing every few hours. And I ALWAYS see something new, usually more weeds to yank out. About a month ago I made the mistake of telling a friend that 2 of our tomato plants looked like they were dying. The friend laughed (loudly) "No one can POSSIBLY kill a tomato plant in Sacramento!" After that, I made it my mission to prove him right. The tomatoes are thriving now, thank you very much. Just a little TLC. Something else is thriving in our garden and I'm not exactly positive what it is, though I have some good guesses. A volunteer plant has popped up in our garden in over 20 places. I pulled most of them out to allow room for what I actually planted there. But in a few places, I'm letting them go. I'm curious.

Here are two that volunteered to live among the tomatoes.

Here's one next to my sad carrots.


The one on the left, I planted. (yellow squash). The two on the right I did NOT. It's just one big squash party.


Here's one trying to flirt with the lettuce.


And oh look! There's a new one right in between the snow peas and green beans. (third wheel)


My theory is that they are cantaloupe or butternut squash. We've eaten our fair share of those and the seeds are probably all over our compost. It could be zucchini though....they all look the same to me in the beginning. I'm secretly hoping for cantaloupe because the ones I planted didn't come up. Go figure. And our family loves melon! If they are zucchini, I'll be doorbell-ditching some at each of your doorsteps. Those plants are no joke. Anybody have any guesses?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

You might name the volunteer plants, "Audrey I", "Audrey II", etc. - Dad

Unknown said...

I donated one of the more vibrant looking volunteer squashes to our preschool garden. I'm pretty sure I killed it in the transfer. :-( It looked like a sad piece of wilted lettuce.