A New Hope

Vegetable gardening has now become a competition with my mother in law. Every year her garden produces boatloads of vegetables. Armfuls of tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers are picked on a daily basis. She says that she doesn't use miracle grow but i've never been sure. The kicker is that she doesn't even like vegetables but mostly enjoys lining them up on her countertop so the everyone who visits can see them.

This year might just be my year. Last week, after my seedlings drooped and my little pipe cleaner sticks no longer had anything to support, I was pretty down on the garden. But today was a new day. I have noticed a lot of things have started to sprout that I had given up on.

Here is a little corn sprout:

I also planted some bush beans two weeks ago and thought that my always happy dog had bounded through them one too many times. But they seem to have survived:

Plants are pretty amazing. Sometimes its hard to pick out the vegetables sprouts from the weed sprouts but these are pretty obvious.

I also broke down and bought some tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers from a local nursery to supplement the little seedlings that I think survived the transition outdoors.

Here is a pepper:

The cage is to protect it from the happy dog.

Here is a panoramic picture of the garden. Because its a panoramic its kind of distorted but I still like it. I am going to try and take one every week to see how things change.

Thanks for reading.

The dark side gains strength

Spring is a very exciting time. When it starts to get warm outside I can just imagine all of the tomatoes, carrots and peppers that my garden will produce. I also am sure that no weeds will sprout as I have cleared them all during the cold winter days.

Of course the harsh reality has hit. Around mid January I planted pods of seeds indoors in preparation for a crazy growing season. The seeds started out great; sprouting in just a few days.

Here is a picture:

Don't they look great? And they looked even better as time went by.

Here they are now:

(That's just dirt where the tomato used to be with a knocked over support stick)

That's a squished cucumber. Croaked pretty soon after I planted it.

I am not sure what went wrong but I think they got really stretched out by bending this way and that with the lack of light. I rigged up a grow light much too late in the growing cycle. We tried helping them out with little pipe cleaner supports but it didn't really help. My dog, Kramer, may have stepped on a few also. Stupid plants.

Hello,
This is my first post to my first blog. I have always wanted to blog about something but I never thought I had anything interesting enough to write about. I am still not sure but decided to start a vegetable gardening blog anyway.

I am a suburban gardener in Virginia. I have been casually growing vegetables for about 6 years and it seems like my gardens get progressively worse from year to year. I am not sure why this is.

This year I have decided to take my garden much more seriously. I spent the fall and winter expanding my garden and rowing new rows. I built some raised beds (which are really great) and bought a lot of new tools that are sure to make my vegetables shoot up.

It seems like everybody else's blog is about how great they are at this or that or how they built something great. Its quite depressing.

My goal with this blog is two fold. First I would like to track my gardens progress through the season and through the years. Second I hope that my blog is encouraging to others who might have stinky gardens like mine.