We have several days of humid rain, no storms but just rain but it has been perfect for my garden!  I was excited to see that we have green beans that are starting to grow! We also have pea blossoms!

The tomatoes are starting to take off as well. I was not going to take any pictures this week but I had to because of the progress! I bet by next week they will be seen over the top of the boards!

I am very pleased with the progress of the Greenstalks!

I am so excited we have things growing in our garden. We were able to bring everything out of the greenhouse and get in the dirt by the end of the day. I think we only lost a couple of pepper plants.  Unfortunately, the two wax pepper plants that I started may or may not survive. They suffered a watering crisis but we planted them out just because we have hope! They are in the bottom row left corner bucket. This bucket garden also has 4 Cherokee purple tomatoes, one was sent to my mother. And one of our two surviving cherry tomato plants.

In total we have 21 Roma tomatoes and 13 slicing tomato’s.  We did end up purchasing a cattle panel to use in the second tomato bed. I am anxious to see how well the tomatoes grow and produce this time.

The greenhouse turned out to be an awesome way to start peppers! This just makes me happy!

We currently have    2 banana peppers (purchased)
24 green peppers (purchased 1)
12 lunch box peppers.
The bed in front of the house has one cherry tomato, one slicing tomato, along with one pepper plant. The snap peas are beginning to reach the trelis and the broccli is getting bigger. I am doubtful that I get anything usable from this but.

In the above beds I have plants about 100 basil plants and 18 green bean plants.  I am also doubtful that any basil plants grow.

We currently have 27cucumber plants!  Including one that has self seeded in the pepper bed!

I purchased 4 yellow squash plants.   I also planted 4 or 5 zucchini seed. Only two of the zucchini seeds have sprouted. .

I saved cantaloupe seeds from last year and they have sprouted!  I will be transplanting about half to another bed to see which grows better.

I purchased 5 watermelon starts so hopefully they will grow as well!

This is the most germination and time I have spent on gardening so I am hoping for a huge pay off. Stick around to see where the garden takes us this year!

I am very happy to report that our greenhouse worked very well while we were in Disney. We came back to healthy and growing plants. We have continued to leave things in the greenhouse until I was a bit more comfortable with no frost or freeze. The predicted last frost date is April 24th. I have been stalking the weather and with no temperatures below 40 in the next 2 weeks, I wanted to get started!  This week, I have been focused on getting some seeds in the ground in order to give them a good start. I have planted cucumbers, basil, zucchini and cantaloupe from seed.  I also purchased flowers, a few strawberry plants and herbs over the last week. The green stalk containers are starting to look pretty.

Yesterday, I was able to get 20 Roma tomato plants and 1 cherry tomato plant in the ground as well.  I want to remember that I need 22 Roma tomato plants for next year to completely fill the long bed.  I was pleasantly surprised to have 4 more Roma tomato plants that what I had counted before we left. I am hopeful that this trend continues! The goal is to get all the tomatoes and peppers planted in the ground by next Saturday unless of course a chance of frost pops up!

We have spent some money on the garden this year. I spent $85 in Mocksville at the farm stand and $21 at the Lexington Farm stand.  Last Sunday, we purchased a new pear tree, a new blueberry tree and a load of dirt for a total of $124.  Last night we also spent another $75 at Home Depot for some supplies such as ant killer and weed killer. This brings our total to $305 currently.  In order to plant the regular tomatoes we have decided to purchase a cattle panel to use as trellis.  I am hoping to keep the total cost to under $400 which is half of our grocery budget for the month.  If we can produce enough salsa and spaghetti sauce for the year then this is a huge money saver!

Hopefully next week we will have a recap of all the numbers and compare to what I thought we started with!

Yesterday was a huge day in the area of gardening around here.  I up potted all of my tomato plants. This is the first time I have ever felt the need to do this and hopefully it will be huge boost.  We also moved all the peppers and tomato plants out to the greenhouse. I did check on everything this afternoon and so far, so good.   I just checked the weather and hopefully we will be able to keep everything alive and it will grow grow grow.

I have not had any germination on the snap peas I planted about two weeks ago, however we have been having a swing in temperatures from 80 to 30 in a 24-hour period.  Once the weather starts to even out things should get better. Our last predicted frost date is April 20th, but we usually have at least one night of frost in May. I am going to wait until the first of May and then decided when to plant things.

I was excited to find that a couple of garlic plants have started. This is a totally new thing for me so anything is more than I have ever had.  I planted the broccoli outside  and lost two plants in the process.

Current Plant Total
15 lunch box peppers (one additional sprout)
2 wax peppers
16 bell peppers (10 of the 12 I started germinated)
21 Roma tomatoes (plus1)
14 Slicing tomatoes (plus 2)
3 cherry tomato (plus 1)
5 Cherokee Purple Tomato (plus one)

My goal is to post again in 2 weeks so we can compare to see what has survived in the greenhouse!

I realized that I need to do a better job with keeping up with updates on the garden. The main reason is the information it provides is so useful for planning.  I spent an hour or so reviewing all the information from the past several years and have a better idea of what I want to do moving forward.

This year we have started spinach outside probably 3 weeks ago. It finally started to sprout

My thoughts are that they will likely not produce as it will be too warm soon. But I have a guide that says 55 days are what is required until harvest, this would be at the end of April which could be cool or could be in the 90s.  I am going to remain hopeful and hope to plant again in the fall.

I was able to get outside and plant around 30 snap peas in the front bed, so we shall see how well they produce.  I have a table of seedlings in the living room!

The broccoli plants (9) were placed outside today to start the hardening off process. I would like to plant these outside next Saturday.

We currently have
14 lunch box pepper (I soaked these seeds prior to planting which I think is the difference)
2 wax peppers (specifically for salsa)
6 bell peppers (this is the 2 week point)   I am planning to soak a second batch of 12 bell peppers to start as well.
20 Roma tomato
12 Slicing Tomato
2 cherry tomato
4 Cherokee Purple tomato

I have planted 6 Garlic bulbs and we have about 20 onions currently growing as well.