Tomatoes, Midsummer Rain and Houseplants

Hello all!
So I realize I've been terrible about posting this month. I was waiting for my seeds to germinate in my vegetable garden to do another post, but there's a been a bit of a minor set-back in that department. Turns out the bean seeds that we'd stored in the garage that I planted weren't viable so I had to go out and get some new ones. I planted those only last week, so I'm still waiting for my beans...
But the tomatoes and peppers are doing well and I think the peas are coming along too. We've had LOTS of rain lately so the gardens have been growing like crazy.

                                                               

I also started a little experiment with some red and yellow peppers my mom bought from the store. After she'd cut them up, I collected all the seeds and put them in plastic bags with some soil in them, according to which color pepper the seeds were from, just to see if they'd sprout. They ended up exceeding my expectations and shot up really quickly. I still don't know if they'll grow actual peppers or if their genetics are all messed up from being grown commercially, but we'll see.

 

I had lots of seeds sprout...

 

So I put in them in the leftover flats we had from when we got a ton of petunias and pansies for the garden. These are the yellow peppers...

 

And these are the red peppers.

The flower garden has also been doing really well with all the rain. We have lots of honeysuckle growing up one of the trellises my dad made, and the poppies (which I didn't get any pictures of because they bloomed a while ago) really made the garden pop with their bursts of orange everywhere. We also have roses blooming which just adds to how great smelling the garden is right now.

 

Honeysuckle.

 

The trellis it's climbing up.

 

 I also planted a morning glory vine out on the very edge of my vegetable garden because it has a perfect fence for it to climb up.

 

Pink roses. They smell amazing. :)

 

My mom's newest hanging basket.

The houseplants are still thriving in the three seasons room. My dad is beginning to develop a thing for houseplants and will often come back from one of his trips to Lowes with not just paint for the garage, but another houseplant or two. 

 

This bromeliad was from the first trip to Lowes...

 

And this Sansevieria was from the second, along with a smaller fern-like plant (not pictured).

My house plants have been thriving except for one spider plant that looks like it's being eaten by something. I have no idea what. It looks almost like a slug or caterpillar has been chewing it up but I don't think that's the case because it's not an outside plant.  

 

 

It's got these crazy bite marks. I have no idea if my cat is just going at it or what. I've moved it up to a higher spot just to see if that is the case and have repotted one of the spider plants into a different pot. I'll keep an eye on it and see how it goes. 

 

The last thing I did today was pot some pepperomia and goldfish plant that had finally grown roots in my vermiculite rooting basin. 

Hopefully next time I write, my veggie garden will be a little more exciting. But my next post won't be until after the week of the 4th because I'm traveling down to Minneapolis for the holiday and to march in a 4th of July parade with my marching band. I might be rather busy, but if I get any good pictures and have time, I'll definitely try to at least post those. At the least, I'll try to tweet some, so go check out my Twitter account. :)

But if I'm not back before then, Happy 4th of July to all my American readers. :)

 

  

A Day in the Garden

So today was my HUGE gardening day. My mom and I went to the greenhouse yesterday and came back with a few flats of flowers and some vegetables for the gardens and I spent all of today planting.
I'm really lucky to have a greenhouse so close to my house because it's only a 5 minute drive to go get seeds and plants.

 The walkway of geraniums.

 Rows and rows and rows of petunias.

 The vegetable greenhouse.

 

Alyssum 

 

Here's the front garden color scheme! Pink, purple and yellow.

Found this gorgeous bloom on the ground.

 

I got some funny looks from people for taking pictures at the greenhouse, but oh well. :P

First on my list for today was the garden right in front of our house just beneath the big picture window. The alyssum went at the front since it's the shortest plant and spreads out very nicely to make a very pretty edge on the garden. Then came petunias in dark purple and peachy-pink and behind those went bright yellow marigolds. At the very back, because they're the tallest plants, I alternated pink cleome plants and cosmos plants.

 

The glare off the house is making the picture a bit harder to see, but this is what it ended up looking like. Once the plants fill out, it'll look a little less sparse.

We also usually have morning glories in front of the house, so last night I made a trellis out of sticks I found in the woods for them to climb up. They also climb all over that old plow pictured below, but we often get so many of them, they trail out onto the lawn instead. I planted a few more morning glory seeds, but as you can see, we already have a few plants coming back from last year.

 

The trellis and plow the morning glories will climb on.

 

Young morning glories.

After that was done, I went to work on the vegetable garden. This garden is made up of four beds and gets a lot of sunlight during the day. 

 Somewhat hard to see the beds, but there are four there.

In the bed on the bottom of the picture below I planted a lettuce seed mix on one half and left the other half unplanted for carrots (which I don't have seeds for yet).

The next bed above that, the one that looks all dark from being watered, I planted with two rows of bean plants.

The third bed above that is the tomato/pepper bed. I planted my "spudmatoes" that I grafted together in my plant propagation class even though I'm not really expecting them to do incredibly well. I'm just hoping to get a couple potatoes or tomatoes out of them. Then came the tomato plants from the greenhouse. We have one cherry tomato plant and two plants of larger tomatoes (I can't remember the variety off the top of my head...) I also planted one bell pepper plant.

In the bed against the fence (the bed pictured furthest away from the viewer in the picture below) I planted climbing pea seeds.

 

The tomato/pepper bed.

After the vegetables were all planted came my herb garden on the side of the house. I mixed in a bunch of good top soil into the sandy soil that was already there and divided the bed up into four sections for my different herbs.

 

(From top right) Basil, parsley, tricolor sage, and Greek oregano.

 

I love all the different colors in the sage.

 Close up of the oregano.

  I used the flat of basil that I've been growing to plant tons of little basil seedlings. I have a feeling I'm going to end up with more than I need.

 

 

We also have chives that come back year after year.

  The back garden was last, and I only needed to plant the front of it. So I planted more cleome toward the back and then mixed the peachy petunias, purple petunias, marigolds, and purple and yellow pansies in the front. The rest of that garden is a bunch of perennials, so no planting was needed there.

 The back garden.

One of my favorite colors of pansy because it looks like someone has painted the colors on.

The last thing left to do for the day was to plant up a few pots and planters to decorate elsewhere. I planted the basket we hang in the garden every year with a pre-potted mix of flowers. Then, just for a little fun, I planted a hanging basket with pansies in the colors of my university. 

 Our large hanging basket.

And a basket of maroon and gold pansies because I can't help but be a little school-spirited, even when gardening.

The three seasons room is turning out really nicely now that it has more plants in it. 

 

I moved a lamp out here last night and found it makes a very good spot for reading or sketching. I ended up going through seeds here this afternoon.

  And speaking of sketches, here's the one I did last night of the flowers in the hanging basket. The picture's a bit fuzzy since this was taken with my iPod camera in low lighting, but I might scan it into my computer at a later date.

Now all that's left to do is plant the zucchini and squash out in the sunny patch by the garage! :)