Vegetable Gardening!

I have not really grown vegetables in the past year or so. Well, I've sort of tried ... but only in containers ... and then I don't water enough, and the plants are too far away from my hose ... it's just too complicated to grow things in containers.

I've been wanting to grow some veggies in the ground, but I rent, and don't want to tear up all the grass, and I also don't think my landlady would like it. Plus it's kind of expensive to build beds and stuff. (Excuse excuse excuse excuse is what Tom would say but we can't all have neon-green thumbs. Hmph.)

Anyway, I was explaining all this to Emily (my boss), who told me I should just garden with her this spring. Eureka! Emily lives on a farm and has beds already built. We both have plenty of seeds, and gardening is more fun with someone else (in my opinion).

So about a week ago I drove out to Wacahoota Road and weeded and sweated and planted seeds. Here's what we're growing (we tend to over-do things when we get together):

Tomato seedlings in a grow box


Tomatoes from seed


Hot peppers and marigolds


Zinnias and basil


Eventually we will plant all those seedlings in Em's raised beds. These are the two we weeded that weekend.


We also planted some seeds directly in the raised beds: okra, four different kinds of sunflowers (I love sunflowers!), and some other stuff.


We are also going to buy some veggie and herb seedlings this week and plant some more stuff in Em's rows.

Our garden is going to be awesome!!!

Winter Vegetables

Another runt-filled season in my veggie garden. I keep waiting for things to get bigger, but they just refuse.

One of these days I am going to get some more media, toss this old media that I don't think is draining well, and plant some new seeds. Maybe this weekend!

Here's my runt lettuce.


Runt kale.


Runt radishes.


Runt corn that preferred my compost pile.


It's the end of the season, so I guess I should just have a runt harvest and be done with it.

More about Food

As I've mentioned before, I love grocery shopping. Because of visiting family and a lack of cash flow, I didn't go grocery shopping for a couple of weeks. When I finally went, last Saturday, I went a little overboard.


I'm at the critical point between having a lot of food I need to cook and having too much cooked food. So I use some produce, but then I have nowhere to put the tupperware with the leftovers. It's a hard life.

What's Growing around My House, Pt. 3

In one of my planters, I took out the bits of remaining plant matter that clearly isn't salvageable and put these new Easter lily bulbs in (Emily got them for us from work). We'll see if they adapt to my "low-key" gardening style!


Hanging strawberries: I don't know why I bother--the dang birds nibble little bits out of each strawberry before I get to it. But every now and again I get an unsullied one. They're not as sweet as last year.


Pulled a crop of radishes the other day. I cut both the radishes themselves and the greens up for a delicious salad I've been eating all week. They're spicier than store-bought radishes--tasty.

What's Growing around My House, Pt. 2

When I moved into my house a couple of months ago, I started a compost pile. Since then I keep waiting for something I discard to sprout, 'cuz when the compost sprouts, I get free plants.

It's easier--and cheaper--to try to grow new things this way, rather than go to the store and pick some plants out. At the old house, I got all kinds of seedlings, some more successful than others. But I've been sorely disappointed at the new house, as my compost has remained singularly barren.

So I watered the compost, and I added more leaves, and I stirred it up, and I waited patiently. Finally, the other day I went to dump my food scraps and voila! Some seedlings had emerged. But I didn't recognize what they were. My compost had never sprouted such plants before!

I carefully dug out one of the plants and looked at its origins. A kernel of corn! Exciting. One of these days I may pull up all of these seedlings and put them in pots. Until then, I just admire them as I dump my scraps.


One of my uncles gave me this ivy plant over the holidays. He had a bunch of them hanging from the pergola on his patio in Ft. Myers. There was some story about some teachers he bought them for...I don't know. Anyway, he had a bunch and offered me one. I loaded the thing--it has vines at least six feet long--into my hatchback and went to St. Pete for a few days. When I drove home, the cooking I had subjected it to in the hatch didn't seem to have affected it.

So naturally I concluded the thing it was invincible (I do test my plants awfully, I know), so I brought the ivy into my bedroom. I was super stoked because it's my first bedroom plant. Imagine--a plant in your bedroom! I never had imagined that, so when it finally occurred to me it blew my mind. I stared at it lovingly every day.

The only problem is that my bedroom is like a cave. It's some shade of dark 24/7 and always kind of cool. I put the plant up and forgot about it for a couple of weeks. Then I started noticing it was shedding a lot of brown leaves. I took it down and realized that the wall-facing side was dying. So I put it in the ICU, i.e., the backyard. I've been leaving it there to soak up some sun and rain, and hopefully it will pull through.

I do like having a bedroom plant. Maybe when I bring it back in, I'll rotate it more frequently so all the sides can suffer equally. "Nobody puts Baby in the corner!"


My Florida violets are thriving, although one much more visibly so than the other--don't ask me why, since they get the same amount of light and water. This native plant is sadly considered a weed in most people's landscapes. But I love it--my favorite plants seem to be considered weeds by most people--and am looking forward to the delicate blooms in later spring.