More Gardening Updates

Mary Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow?

Like this, bitchezzz!

It's so full! With real plants that are really growing. And I'm not doing all that much to make it happen. My inexplicable gardening good fortune has returned!

To refresh your memory, this is where we were at the last update.

Nothing but a few seedlings. I didn't have high hopes. But what a difference two months makes!

The two flimsy tomato plants are nice and sturdy with green tomatoes and I'm overly checking on, eager anticipating their ripening. Oscar likes to help me with the garden check ups and always reports "Not red yet!"

Meanwhile, my crop of jalapeños is looking ready to pick, but I wanted to use with along with my tomatoes for fresh salsa. So, timing fail. I did throw one in some fajitas the other night so I'm getting use out of them.

Then, there are the miraculous cucumbers. I planted the seeds following the instructions on the seed packet: build up dirt mounds and toss seeds on top. For a couple of days, every time I'd check on them it just looked like some jackass had thrown seeds on top of dirt mounds. I gave up. Then Oscar knocked one of the mounds down with his shovel. Then I really gave up. Then Seamus stepped on another one and I ordered everyone to go inside and immediately forgot the seeds ever existed.

Weeks went by and suddenly... cucumber seedlings! 3 of them! Well, to be honest there was a fourth but when I tried to move it out of the shadow of the squash plant it didn't survive the trip. My bad.

The little plants aren't exactly thriving, but they are still standing so I'm counting them as a win.

But if you want to talk about thriving, let's discuss my spaghetti squash.

Oh wait, just kidding, that picture was taken a month ago when I was going to write an update and say, "Oh man, look how big this plant is!"  But now, get a load of this jerk now!

I've had to trim back the sprawling arms twice already to keep it from taking over my whole yard and/or busting in through my bedroom window.

I have to say, though, that as impressive as this plant is in size, it's not exactly yielding a great bounty of squash. I had two good ones going, then one afternoon I was surprised to find one of the two fruits sitting on the kitchen counter. I picked it up and brought it into the living room to ask Devin what it was doing off the plant and he said our neighbor told him it was ready to pick. Small, green and soft, it was clearly not even close to being ready. Half my harvest wiped out just like that! From now on he is forbidden from taking gardening tips from our neighbor, though he's still welcome to accept his offer for ice cold cans of Coors at 10:30 am.

I didn't fret for too long over this tragedy, figuring there'd still be more squash than I knew what to do with (actually, I'm not even sure what to do with one; I don't really like squash). However, since then only two new fruits have formed, and I managed to kill one of them when I lifted it off the ground to take a closer look. Heavy handed gardening strikes again!

Finally, I've got a little something something going on the side. This is my pumpkin patch! Hopefully I've timed it out right so I have pumpkins in time for Halloween... or else you're all getting pumpkin pies for Labor Day.

My mom helped me plant the seeds during her recent visit. We planted extras, thinking only a few would survive. But I forgot to take her green-thumbedness into account and now I think every single seed has sprouted. I know I need to thin this out soon, before they all start sprawling out like their squash cousins and eventually eat the cat, but it's so heartbreaking to rip them out of the ground so I can't bring myself to do it. Instead I'm hoping some of them spontaneously die.

Now that my confidence has returned, what should I plant next?