busy bee

With kids getting out a school and the garden going full blast i've been very busy keeping everything on my full plate. I have been doing double working in the garden and working to eat everything from the garden. I've taken lots more pictures though so I should have some consistent updates coming soon.

Below is a picture of my green bean patch. My beans were producing so quickly I had to pick handfuls every 2 days to make sure they wouldn't get too big. When you notice your green beans starting to flower this is when you should start looking out for your little beans to appear. Once you see some of adequate size start picking. You'll want to check on them every few days because you will be surprised at how fast new large beans will be there waiting to be picked. Green beans take a little effort to pick because your looking for a green bean on a green plant, but don't be shy nudge that plant around to find all the delicious beans. Sometimes they like to hide near the base of the plant. They are wonderfully delicious just take them inside and give them a rinse and enjoy!

I've have already blown through my first crop and below is where I have pulled them up and replanted. My second crop is already up and beginning to produce you can see them in the right corner.

Holy tomatoes! I have A LOT of tomatoes. It's not a bad problem to have. This is a pick I did and then a few days later had to pick again! That lonely little green one in the front was an accidently got picked casualty. You tomato plants might need a little care at this point. Some of mine have started to slow producing and the plant dies back a little. You'll find lots of brown and yellow dried up branchs especially near the bottom. I like to go through and trim these off, it looks unsightly and it makes picking tomatoes a little difficult. So I would suggest a little trimming.

surprises

Sometimes with gardening you get these great little surprises. Last year I planted these two artichoke plants right in my landscaping. I had given my husband the job of digging me a big hole so I could plant the little plants and surround them with good soil instead of the dirt that is las vegas. He didn't really get my idea and they ended up in the ground without much good soil around them. Even still I left them there and just waited. Nothing really happened last year they died back over the winter and I trimmed them down to little nubs. This spring they sprouted right back up and seemed to be growing nicely and then I saw these. Artichokes! I've got five on this one plant. For a girl that grew up in northern California artichokes are a favorite of mine so i'm really excited about this. I have been miracle growing them from time to time to help them along. I must say though i'm still pretty surprised that they are thriving like they are. Just out in my landscape.

growing along

 

Been very busy doing lots of traveling and such but I got to come home to this wonderful sight ( pictured above) !

 My garden is really starting to gain some speed and i'm starting to enjoy the fruits of my labor. As you can see a lot of my plants are starting to produce. My tomatoes already have about 20-30 tomatoes on each plant they are green of course but some are ripening and turning bright and juicy red. This is one of the great things about tomatoes the ripe ones are always easy to spot among the bushy green plant. My green beans are a little harder to notice but I gave them a good looking and found that I actually had quite a few ready to be picked. Planing early is so great hear in Vegas because as the locals know this time of year gives us such a swing in weather temps. So a little wrap up on what i'm able to start harvesting, some green beans, snap peas, parsely, cilantro, a few tomatoes, bell and banana peppers. I've got zucchini and squash flowering and probably producing within the next few weeks and I haven't checked my potatoes but i'm sure i've got a few ready in there too. This does great things for my dinner table and produce bill.

This was the most surprising returning from my trip lots of sweet and fresh snap peas. I probably ate half of them as I was giving them a wash.

yummy!

if you ever have any question please just stop and leave me a comment i'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.

layout

I thought I give you a layout of my own garden so when i'm talking about things you'll know where i'm talking about. Also to just give you a better idea of what I have and how i've chosen to lay it all out. A few notes about my garden:

My garden is 3.5 ft wide and 7 ft long. My garden has a divider that runs right down the middle to help support the boxes so I end up with .5 ft planing spots on each end.

Some plants like the tomatoes which can be grown one per square ft I decided to give a little extra room just for my sake of keep them maintained and easily harvesting them.

This is just my garden right now things will move around and i'll plant others as the season progresses.

zucchini and squash take up a lot of room! I love eating them so I will always keep them in my garden but they are space hogs so make sure and give them space. I might try trellising them later in the season wait and see.

Don't forget my potatoes are in buckets off to the side of my garden. Not included in this little diagram.

There are so many more things you could grow in this season that I just don't prefer or I run out of room for. So don't look at this and think this is all you could grow. Do a little research or grab one of the books I recommend and see what else might suit your fancy. These are my favorite staples and the crops I consistently will eat all summer long. If only I had more space I could grow a lot more different crops like melons and winter squash and ohh so many others i'd also like to enjoy but for now i'm limited.

beans

Green beans are so yummy when they are fresh from the garden. This is another one of my favorite crops probably because it's one of my favorites to eat. I never have trouble cooking these up for dinners or lunches. It's always a given to grow what you enjoy eating. No point in growing things that you don't find appetizing. Now to growing these little beauties. Bean seeds really should be soaked before you sow them into the ground. I usually soak mine overnight in little dishes with the seed packet behind them, to make sure I don't mix up which is which. There are a lot of different varieties of green beans, there's yellow ones, purple ones, green ones, ones for drying, flat ones all kinds. Another big difference is there are vining ones and bush ones. I prefer the bush ones. They really don't take up too much space and I find they just are better producers. So according to square foot gardening you can plant eight plants per one square foot. so just make 8 little holes in your designated square and drop two seeds in per hole and then cover them back up. That simple.

A little while later you will end up with these lovely little plants. You'll see them begin to flower and then start producing your wonderful green beans. Green beans are a good plant to succession plant. Meaning you will plant one crop wait a few weeks and then plant another crop. That way once your fist ones done producing you'll have others continuing to produce so you will always have a harvest. This is my first crop and I just planted the seeds for my second one, so if you sometimes see blank spaces in my garden that only because i'm leaving room for a succession crop. Happy green, yellow or purple bean growing!

tomatoes

Tomatoes are usually the most popular plants in the garden. Most people want and like them and what makes it nice with just a few tips they can be very easy to grow. Below are my little babies getting bigger and bigger. This year my biggest lesson from last year is PLANT MORE! I only planted I think 3 regular tomato plants and 3 of the small cherry or pear tomatoes. I also learned last year to plant more of the regular slicing tomatoes and maybe 1 of the cherry kinds. I like cherry tomatoes a lot but wow they produce a lot and for my little household I was overwhelmed by 3 plants of them. Another tip I would give is stay away from heirlooms unless thats the kind of tomato you were really wanting. I had a hard time keeping that variety successful and for me they are a slow producer. My favorite varieties for our area are " Early Girl" this is a good standard slicing tomato just like the ones you'd pick up in the grocery store ( but 10X more flavor ). I planted 2 Early Girl tomato plants this year, they were my favorite from last year and they are just tasty and reliable. I also planted an "ACE 55" tomato, similar to the early girl just a good overall tomato. Another would be a "Roma" sounds familiar to people probably and it is, it a thick-meated tomato great for sauces and canning. My next one is new this year but I planted a " Celebrity" tomato which again is just a good reliable slicing tomato. I planted one " Yellow Pear" I just can't resist these because those tiny little yellow jewels are so yummy and sweet. Last but not least one wild card a "Green Zebra" I thought i'd just give it a shot, as the name states it's a green striped like tomato. I always think it's fun to pick one just to test it out. So all together in one end of my box I planted 7 tomato plants! Im excited for all the bounty I will be getting from that, i'm sure my friends and family will be excited too since they usually partake also. According to the square foot gardening method I like to use you can plant one tomato plant per square foot. I spaced mine a little further just so I could work around them better also because I wanted to leave some space because during the summer they provide great shade for me to grow other plants under them.

I love tomato plants you'll know what I mean when you grow them yourself but they have this great smell when your working with them.

Check out these beauties! This is why I like to plant my tomatoes a little on the early side like first of March. The tomatoes hold up fine, and the weather fluctuates so much from high sixties to the eighties it's nice to have them in and going before the real warm weather hits. Also in vegas we have such a long summer you can really grow two whole crops of tomatoes. One starting in beginning of March and the other late July early August. I try to make good use so I can get tons of tomatoes. The excess are great for canning and making into sauces for the freezer. If you like tomatoes trust me you'll be wanting as many as you can get of these fresh babies. There is also something so rewarding for me in the summertime not buying produce from the grocery store except for a few odds and ends I don't grow like onions. Having all my produce right at my back door tasting ten times better!

I took this picture to show you why I love to trellis my tomatoes. Just look how that tomato plant is actually on it's own growing around the trellis. So much more low maintenance than staking which takes a lot of effort and to me didn't support enough, my poor plants last year were being squished under the stain of holding that ripening fruit. Trellising gives all the support in a nice even fashion and makes working around the plant very easy, this is the reason I don't like cages to me you have to do a little bit of finagling to get to the plant inside the cage instead of it being nice a spread out on a trellis. Just in case you didn't gather I promote TRELLISING TRELLISING TRELLISING for your tomatoes.

The proof is in the pudding. Here we are beginning of april and I already have gorgeous little tomatoes growing on my wonderful plants. This is one of my "Early Girl" varieties.

A few tidbits on tomatoes. Tomatoes do need a little pruning. If you look at the picture above see where the arrow is pointing that little bit growing in the middle of the split in the plant. This is called a sucker. It's not harmless but any means and there is even a debate on whether you really need to get rid of these but from what i've read just pulling off these little guys will help more of the effort to stay in your main plant and fruit on it. A sucker can kinda suck the energy away from the plant and in a small garden it is a good idea to get rid of these as they come along just to give you the best leg up on your main plant. That all being said sometimes usually in the beginning I am very good about keeping up with removing the suckers and sometimes i'm not. I try to just once a week or so go out take a look at my plants and just simply prune those little babies off.

Another tidbit about tomatoes would be the two different growing habits of them. One being the determinate type which is bushier, won't grow quite as tall and requires less support like staking, trellising or cages. They will tend to bear their crop all at once. The other one is an indeterminate which is more vine like, will definitely need trellising and will bear fruit over a longer of period of time. Last year my indeterminate tomato plants grew to the top of my trellises and beyond even wove back down and starting growing back towards the ground from the top. I have a few of both types in my garden I don't think one is better than the other. I think it's nice to have both so you can have a well rounded tomato garden. Just check out the little tag when your buying the tomato plants it just helps to maybe plan out where you place them knowing which way they will grow.

Tomatoes should be bought as an already established plant from the nursery. To grow from seed outside would take way too long and you can start them indoors but lets just go the easy route and buy them ready to go. They aren't pricey usually a dollar or two at the nursery and they always have a great variety. 

Wow that was a long post and their is probably still a lot of tomato info to put out there but i'll start with that for now and add more as my tomatoes mature. Happy tomato growing. Once you have garden fresh tomatoes you'll be sad to go back.

looking good

Spring is gearing up! here is a look at my garden as of yesterday. As you can see my tomatoes are already getting big and I already have a few tomatoes on there green but growing. Here I just assume that you all know which plant as which. Writing this I deiced I should do an ariel shot and give you a blueprint of my garden. Will do everyone. Take a look though it's starting to look really good. Check out my potatoes back in those buckets in the background they are looking great!

rabbit food...I think not

Growing lettuce is very rewarding to me, it grows very quickly and all you have to do when you want a little salad or need a little lettuce for something is snip a little and head back inside. Whats great about lettuce is after you snip a little for your dinner it will just produce more. It should do this reappearing act 2-3 times before you would actually need to replant. For a household like mine where i'm usually the only one eating "rabbit food" as my husband would call it I usually plant a small little square in my garden and it lasts me quite awhile. It's a nice crop for a small garden because it barely takes up any room. To plant it, I just do a small little well about 12 inches long and salad seeds are very tiny, so I just sprinkle them in my little well and cover them up. You don't have to worry about thinning these because you are going to eat them while they are still baby tender so you don't need to worry about them being too crowded.

Now when i'm talking about lettuces the varieties I loves are Arugula, Mescalin Mix, and Baby Spinach. These are not head lettuces like Iceberg that you see in the grocery store or Romaine. I tried growing those last year and to be honest they were a little slow growing and I also found they attracted a lot of bugs. I found that growing these little baby greens was so much more rewarding and I loved the ability to just snip and eat and have them just continue producing. A little bit more about the varieties, Arugula i've heard it called rocket, it has a very peppery taste and a almost spinach flat like leaf. If you've never tried it I would recommend it, it adds a nice kick to whatever you are using it for. Mescalin Mix is a variety of lots of baby lettuces it has a little bit of everything it's great. Spinach is pretty self explanatory it's a little slower growing but as leaves get edible size start snipping.

If your starting a garden give these little baby lettuces a try, they will sprout very quickly and after just a few short weeks they will be ready for your dining room table. Mine pictured here are about a month old. They are a perfect size and as you can see above i'm enjoying the fresh and healthy reward.

spuds

My favorite crops to grow are potatoes! I love eating potatoes which would be an obvious reason why they are my favorite but they are also really easy to grow and a beautiful plant to have in the garden. This year to give me a little more room in my boxes I decided to get a little creative and figure out a different place to grow them this year. So as you can see below I decided to use plastic party barrels as my make shift potato boxes. I waited till a little after Halloween and picked some up at Walmart on sale for 5$, they seem like a perfect size to grow some potatoes but since this is my first year using them we will see.

This is me planting my potatoes.. Potatoes are a lot different than most plants because you plant them using seed starts. Which you can buy at most nursery's or home depots. A seed start is just a potato that is all wrinkly and for lack of a better word " old looking " which it is, and it has and eye growing out of it. I'm sure everyone has experienced having an old potato in your cupboard that ends up spouting a little something when it was left too long. This is part of that same idea but you can't just plant potatoes from the grocery store because they are usually treated with something to help them not sprout. It's best to buy them from a nursery because they are usually certified disease free and already have a eye spouting out, so they are ready to plant right out of the bag. Now when i'm talking about potatoes I didn't plant big russet potatoes, I planted new potatoes a red a white variety I don't know much about the russet variety and they are so cheap at the grocery store I haven't felt the need to really research too much into that. The new potatoes suit me just fine and they are so delicious fresh out of the ground!

I follow a square foot gardening plan and according to that I can put 4 potatos starts per 1 sq ft. So they are a little tight in my buckets i'll have to see if the get too crowded. Now I did drill holes in my buckets on the bottom to let the water drain. Then put newspaper on the bottom just so they don't clog up with soil and the soil doesn't run right out. I also routed my irragation over to my buckets so I don't have to worry about hand watering them. So back to planting the potatoes. I filled the bottom of the barrel with 6-8 inches of soil placed my seed potatoes in and then covered them up with 3-4 inches of soil.

About a week later my potato plants started to peak up through the soil.

You then want to cover your little plants leaving just a few tips showing with a few inches of more soil.

Another week later my plants sprouted up again, and again you'll want to cover them with a little more soil. You'll want to continue this process until your soil reaches up to 1-2 inches below the edge of you container or bucket in my case. Potatoes are an amazing crop to grow and so rewarding. What is really fun about potatoes are you don't have to pull the whole crop when you want to start harvesting you can just dig and sneak a few potatoes for dinner and then continue to let the plant grow!

something to hang on

Many of your plants like tomatoes, vine beans, cucumbers, peas, etc. need something to help support them as they grow and the plant becomes bigger. Your main goals are to keep it off the ground, and to save a lot of space, and it makes taking care of the plant and harvesting from it much easier. My favorite kind of supports are trellises, I find they take up the least amount of space but also provide a very sturdy place for my plants to hang out. This is a little step by step on how I do my trellising.

First you'll want to put in something to anchor your trellis frame to the ground, the plumbing pipe will then fit right over this steel bar.

( My amazing dad does all my garden handiwork, Thanks Dad! )

Then you cut your pipe ( just a plumbing pipe you can buy at most hardware stores )

you'll need two for the sides how ever tall you'd like them to be. They ones on the the end of my boxes are 7 feet tall the smaller ones in the interior of the box are only 5ft. 

Slide your long side pieces right over your pipe that has been hammered into the ground. While at the hardware store buy some L brackets ( these should be right by the conduit piping  in the store ) like you can see in the photo. Then cut a center piece and just assemble it all together.

This is an up to date photo of the garden. My trellises are up and ready to go. In most garden sections or stores they sell trellis string it is the what looks like netting on my trellises. I just take it and zip tie it all the way around my frame. Now my tomatoes can just be weaved in and out of the string. This way they will have plenty of support and they are nice and tidy taking up little space. 

This is my favorite way to solving the "how to support my plants"  it just seems the most effective for the amount of space I have and they easiest for harvesting and taking care of the plants. We also have A LOT of wind here a stand alone trellis I feel couldn't stand up to those big gusts and I worry they would fall and damage the plants. When you have such limited garden space I feel like every plant counts I do my best to make sure they stay intact. Since the summer heat is brutal here I use the two trellises on the ends of my boxes as support for a shade cloth ( i'll post pictures later ) I put up during the worst part of the summer to help my plants from getting scorched. There are many many other options out there if you took a look, but as said above this just works best for me.

dirt you ask?

This is the one bigger investments you are going to make when you do a garden here in Las Vegas ( zone 11 ) is SOIL. The soil here if you can call it that will not support a nice fresh vegetable garden. You have to get around this by purchasing soil but think of it this way you are providing your garden with exactly what it wants and needs in order to grow healthy productive plants. I purchased a special mix from Home Depot but it was the brand for Mel Bartholomew my favorite square foot garden guru. He recommends using a combination of Peat Moss, Vermiculite, and Compost, FIVE different kinds of compost. I was lucky enough to just find his brand and go with that instead of combining all that but I really think that most potting soils can be just as good for starting your garden. I just purchased some bags of Dr. Q's Veggie and Herb potting mix down at Star Nursery for 10.99 for a 2 cu feet bag, and I was really happy with it. The big thing I also read about soil is COMPOST, COMPOST, COMPOST! It helps to feed your garden over the years I have yet to compost myself but they have a nice big compost bin down at Sams Club I have a feeling i'll be purchasing it. Just take a minute while you are purchasing your soil and read the labels just like you would in a grocery store, look for things like bat guano or worm castings. Of course you won't understand everything in there but take a look you might see more than you think and just compare it to a few others and then make your buy I doubt there is really to many bad ones. Ones that say Veggie and Herbs are usually a safe bet. Good luck dirt hunting!

here we go!

I debated on how to start this blog off..... I decided to just stat with something fairy simple, this is my garden. Are you impressed? Haha from the picture directly below it definitely doesn't look like much but when I consider the amount of space we actually get in these cookie cutter homes in Vegas having two boxes feels like a great start for me. I hope to one day get a little more space and add more boxes, but I do have a few tricks up my sleeve so just wait. So here it is the boxes are composite wood that came in a kit I got at Sams Club. I don't know if I would have taken the gardening leap if I hadn't found these boxes. Building them on your own would not be too difficult but it would probably be above my building skills and these were just so easy and ready to go. For those thinking about buying these since they are on the market again this year at Sams Club they aren't a bad buy. They are very easy to put together and do the job but I will say over the years they will need replacing I don't see them holding up for too long. Pictured below is my garden after winter neglect, but keep scrolling

Here it all all gussied up and ready for spring/summer

( notice my garden helper in the background) The fence around it helps to keep my dogs/children out. So there it is blog post number one. As for my plans I plan to keep you updated on my own garden and how it's going but also to concentrate posts on garden tips, certain plants, and other helpful information....at least I hope it is helpful.