Ground Control to Major Mom

Isn’t he cute????

So here’s our first watermelon. There are two of them growing right now.

This thing is TINY! We’re talking about the size of my thumbnail…see how big the blades of grass look?

Our garden is doing well, although the lack of rain has made it a struggle. Yesterday afternoon and overnight last night we received our first rainfall here since April 4th. As the heat has really turned up, we are also seeing signs of heat stress on our pumpkins and cucumbers.

I’ll take more pictures of the garden this weekend before I head out to Nebraska for more AF Reserve work.

I was planning to be scarce from the blogosphere while Dave and I attend a “Squadron Commander’s Course” at the base all week. The kids were going to the before- and after-school child care. But on Tuesday, Jacob came home from school looking and feeling pretty poor, and had a 101F fever. I kept Jacob home from school today so he could recover, and here I am with an unexpected day at home. I was able to catch up on a bunch of household odds and ends, including taking some pictures of my veggie garden so far! I’m so excited about how well things are going. I’m also prepared for everything here to be all fried-to-heck by late June.

It’s been 5 1/2 weeks since we planted our seedlings. Let’s start with a before and after:

March 13, 2011.

April 20, 2011.

Enjoy some close up pictures of the garden’s progress.

Our first jalapeno pepper.

Our first bell peppers.

Grape tomatoes.

Yellow granex onions.  If they were growing in Vidalia County, GA, they’d be “Vidalia Onions”.

Cucumbers-to-be.

Our first female pumpkin flower…blog followers from 2009 remember my pumpkin pimping days here, here and here.

From my previous blog about the fauna on the Panhandle, you’ll know that when I see new friends in the backyard I’m ready to investigate.  {Running to search Google}  Okay, I’m back.  What we have here is a “Six-Lined Racerunner“.  He was hanging out near our garden.

Here are TWO green anoles sitting under my upside-down tomato planter.  The one at the bottom has his pink “dewlap” exposed, but since he’s head-on, you can’t see it too well.  This picture shows the dewlap a little better, but you can’t see the 2nd lizard as well, so I didn’t feature this pic.

One of my two upside-down tomato planters, dripping with young green plum tomatoes!

I can’t wait to make some “Grammy Vollmer Pasta Sauce” with these!

…How does your garden grow?  In this location, with lots of containers!

The wooden frame around the small containers was left here by the homeowner.  He had made a sandbox, but never used it.  He said we could use it as a sandbox…um…that’s okay.  It’ll be more of a bench for our container garden.

Definitely one of the NON-perks of being a mobile military family: I have walked away from great gardens at 5 of my past 6 homes.  Didn’t do any gardening in Korea, I’m afraid.

One day I’ll have to do a summary of my past gardens, at least from Ohio till now.  Each time, it takes 1-2 seasons to get the hang of things, and by the time I have something spectacular, I’m offering the harvest to the movers as they’re loading my sofa onto the big orange truck!  Or in the case of Florida, I had this incredible full-life-cycle butterfly garden…I was incorporated into local homeschooling families’ lesson plans!

In past houses we’ve been able to dig up parts of our yard and make the garden happen.  When we owned our homes (in eastern FL and NC) it was a no brainer.  We could dig to our heart’s content.  In Nebraska, Dave talked to our landlord and got permission to dig up a really good-sized hunk of our backyard.

Here we decided to take advantage of our huge back patio and do some container gardening this time around.  There are many benefits to container gardening, starting with having total control over the soil!  What we’re starting with is MY concoction, free of critters, with plenty of compost and manure!

I took advantage of a free shipping promotion at my favorite garden shop, the Gardener’s Supply Company.  I picked up a couple of “Grow Bags” that fits my 64″ tall tomato cages and a 3′ x 6′ “Grow Bed”, all part of their portable raised bed line of products.  And as I do every year, I stocked up on their “Super Hot Compost Starter” for my compost bin.  (Another non-perk, having to empty and ship my awesome compost bin every 3 years!).

I’m hoping this “Grow Bed” will last me for several years.  It can be disassembled into six 3′ pieces and easily boxed up.  There’s also an inexpensive liner that I’m not sure will last beyond this assignment, but we’ll see how that goes.

Today we headed out to Lowe’s while J was at a birthday party.  We stocked up on 10 HUGE bags of potting mix, 2 bags of manure and 2 bags of mushroom compost.  Plus seedlings for my new herb garden, plus more seedlings for our salsa garden.  The boys actually asked for this.  I promised to try to stick to foods we’d actually eat — usually there’s something we don’t eat, like Chinese eggplant or gourds, and it was Jacob’s idea to make salsa and tomato sauce with what we grew.  Thanks to the 10% military discount, I was able to keep this purchase under $200!

Enjoy some pictures of today’s gardening…I know most of the readers here will be frothing at the mouth, still waiting for that last frost…

First, a commentary.  This product was at Walmart, not Lowe’s.  What made someone think that Lightning McQueen and Mater will help the Burpee Company sell cucumber growing kits?  I’m just sayin’…

Dave and I had to dig deep into our inner Tetris skills to make this all fit into the back of the truck.  One of the bags of dirt popped open and poured into the middle row of seats.  Fun fun fun!  Days like today, we miss our ’03 Odyssey.

We had a lot of work ahead of us here…Dave’s finishing assembling the Grow Bed frame while J’s admiring our seedling choices.  He wasn’t with us at Lowe’s, he was at a birthday party.

My oldest son was in charge of planting the tomato plants into our “grow bags”.

The young man in the middle is one of our neighbors, who’s J’s age.  He’s in J’s Cub Scout pack too, so we let his Mom know to give him Wolf Scout credit for all his help today.

For once, I’m in a picture.

J’s very proud of his work!

T asks for carrots in the garden every year.  Those have to be planted as seeds, so he’s putting carrot seeds down here.

After we were done filling our existing containers, we ended up with one extra tomato plant.  We searched and searched for a container, and came up with the recycling bin we used in Nebraska.  Here we have “Hurlburt Field Recycles” bins, and that one has been just taking up space in our garage.  I poked a hole in the bottom and “recycled” it!

That tall piece is a Gardener’s Supply cucumber trellis.  I LOVE IT!  And I love more that it fits here!

I’m so excited for fresh herbs again!