We are super excited about our garden this year. I purchased most of the plants from a local nursery and they all have taken off. We discovered this in our garden yesterday so I posted a picture on facebook to find out what it is and how to use. I do know it is a type of squash but really need to know when to harvest as well.

Matt grew up with the saying “knee high by the fourth of July”, fortunately for us, our corn is already past knee high at Memorial Day. I inserted the kids for some perspective.

Next we have peppers, this is a banana pepper.

We decided after losing all of our pickles and cucumber relish in the freezer a couple of weeks ago to plant some addition plants. I am hoping to have a bumper crop this year.

I am relieved to see that the sweet potatoes we started our selves from last year’s crop are starting to grow and appear the right color.

We have already started to freeze several batches of basil. I am wondering if I can do the same with dill.

Squash plants are taking over in this bed.

Finally in the past two days our watermelon and cantaloupe have sprang to life.

Please leave a comment to help me know what the mystery squash plant is and how to use it!

I am super excited about the way our garden is growing this year. We have actually already started to harvest and freeze basil and dill. Today, I found four of the smallest squash ever, the size of my hands. I am hoping that with the expected sunshine in the next week, things will start to grow bigger quickly. So here are some pictures I took on Saturday.

Corn almost knee high!

cucumbers are starting to grow.

beans that we planted seeds for.

Sweet potatoes like warm and sun, hopefully they will start to perk up .

The tallest plants are the tomato plants… we are seeing some yellow flowers but these also need some sun to grow!

The focus this week has been on getting our garden in the ground and growing. I am proud to say that we actually got most of it accomplished.

First is the map I worked on Monday and Tuesday night

I have 100 corn seeds planted in addition to the 100 squares above. The blank box will be sweet potatoes. I am trying something new this year and growing our own slips for planting. Currently they are sitting on the kitchen cabinet and look like this.

We have tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, green beans, snow peas, red and yellow onions, lettuce, jalapeno peppers, sweet peppers and banana peppers, watermelon and cantaloupe. If you look closely you can see where we attempted to use seed pods to start some of the plants.  I have spent right at $100 between seeds and plants so far this year which is less than last year with almost double the amount of items.

Today we used the sprinkler to water everything. I hope to get a good harvest this year and also do some steady pictures over the next two months so I can see what worked and what did not.

• I have been able to finish up fairly early at work the last two days, which has given me the chance to spend some time outside working on the square foot garden and other needed yard activites.
• Yesterday, I spent the majority of the time working on moving hostas  from the spot where we have plans to place an rain barrel. Next I needed to plant flowers purchased two weeks ago. I am very hopeful that our last frost has pasted. The official date is April 30th.
• Today, we mowed the yard and spent the majority of our time working on our square foot garden.
• Matt has help me to develop a drawing of the garden that will be reuseable for the next several year. I need to sit tonight and figure out just what plants are going where and what will need to be purchased. I will be using a spreadsheet to get a fair count on what all we need.  The goal is to plant everything but sweet potatoes this weekend.
• The sweet potatoes have started to spourt and I am excited to see if this experiment is going to work. Not spending even $7 on new sweet potato plants is a savings.
• We are expecting to plant around 100 stalks of corn. In addition I have 100 other square to plant.