My Virgin Harvest

I've been reading a blog for about a year now called Dig this Chick.  It's written by a hip Mama in Montana that is very crafty and I always enjoy reading the stories about her kids and learning new tricks from her.  In addition to raising kids she sews, cooks, and gardens.

Every year she hosts Virgin Harvest for people that want to start a garden or grow something new.  I remember spending my summer days in the garden with my Grandma growing up and I always LOVED the fresh vegetables that she would cook for us.  I'm not a pro like she was but I thought I would give it a shot this year and try to maintain a few plants.  I've never had much luck with flowers...as in they die within a few days so I was a little nervous.  I didn't want to dig up any of my husbands prized yard that he works so hard on and I just assumed that the plants were going to die anyway so I planted them right up against the house.

I planted 1 each of jalapeno pepper, cayenne pepper, sweet banana pepper, red bell pepper, straight neck yellow squash, crooked neck yellow squash, zucchini, cucumber, and pumpkin.

About 2 weeks after I planted everything

Now considering I don't have much space to grow a garden and I've not been in a garden since my summer days spent at my Grandma's growing up....I over estimated it a little bit.  Things started out small and great.  But I forgot that a cucumber is a creeping plant, a pumpkin is vine that goes everywhere, and squash plants get as big as me!

L:  First Cayenne bloom, R:  First Jalapeno bloom

The very first thing I picked

First Jalapenos but I should have waited a little bit longer to pick them.

The pepper plants are doing great!  The Jalapeno and Cayenne started producing almost immediately.  The sweet banana took a while but it's doing great now and my bell peppers are finally sprouting.  The squash plants produced a few edible squash and I got one good zucchini, but after a few weeks they became out of control and quit producing because I think they got over crowded.  They started overtaking the grass and it made my hubby freak out a little so they had to be pulled.  My pumpkin vine bit the dust about a week ago, I'm not sure what happened because it was looking great and then all of sudden it wasn't.  I got one good cucumber but the plant is still blooming and looks healthy so I'm leaving it alone for right now. Most of the cucumbers get about an inch long and then shrivel up and I have to pull them but I do have two cucumbers that are looking good and should be ready to pick soon.  Hopefully it will pan out and produce a few more before the summer is over.

Here is a picture of the only mishap I had with my peppers:

I have never seen one of these caterpillars before other than pictures and he fascinated me.  Ivy and I spent a lot of time looking at him and talking about him...she was just as fascinated but wasn't getting anywhere near him.  I tried to get him off my plant with a stick so that we could see him better and move him but he wouldn't budge.  I really wasn't sure what to do with him so I just left him alone...mistake.  The next morning when I went out to check my plants he was much bigger and a good bit of my pepper plant was missing so something had to be done.  I still couldn't get him to climb onto stick to move him so I just clipped off the part of the plant he was on and moved him....across the yard over to some very leafy potato plants that Chris had planted as ground cover.  Problem solved right?  Wrong...he only likes the leaves of cayenne peppers.  I went back outside that evening and he was back.  Seriously!  I thought about maybe putting him in an aquarium so that Ivy could watch him make a cocoon and turn into a moth but he was just so big!  Chris thinks it was a totally different caterpillar but I thoroughly checked that plant and all the other plants after I moved him.  Since I moved him the second time (across the street) we've not seen anymore.

This has been a lot of fun to do with Ivy because it makes her excited to eat vegetables when she can pick them!  When I let her pull that first cucumber she nearly had a fit to cut it up and eat it RIGHT THEN!  She even ate a few bites of squash and zucchini that I cooked.  She said she liked them but I wasn't convinced considering she only ate one bite of each and then said she was full.

Most of these pictures are a few weeks old but hopefully I will have some more before the end of summer.  And hopefully after reading a few books during the winter I'll have a better understanding of it next year and have a little more success along with a little bit bigger space.