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| Cherokee Purple Tomato 5 Weeks after Starting Indoors |
The kids are excited that we're starting lots more stuff in our little family garden this year! The husband got enthused enough to make it a little construction project, including starting to harvest some rainwater in a barrel (pretty good for a city boy). And I'm happy about an outdoor project that the whole family can be involved in.
It's not the perfect garden, we realize. I'm trying a little of this and a little of that for pest control, from collars around young plants to diatomaceous earth and even a neem oil spray to discourage them. I've integrated herbs and marigolds into the vegetable area. I've still found tiny little nibbles on my young tomato plants and am concerned. But I have no regrets about ditching yesterday's toxic pesticides.
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| Tennessee Spinning Top Gourd One Week after Planting |
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| Lazy Wife Greasy Pole Bean One Week after Planting |
I wish schedules would have permitted starting my tomato and pepper seeds indoors a couple of weeks sooner and that we'd been able to plant outdoors earlier as well. But I'm still hopeful for a mid-to-late-summer bounty!
In addition to planting two types of open pollinated zucchini squash, tomatoes, lettuce and beans, we planted a few fun things like flowers and gourds. Sow True Seed's envelope says "Children used to spin the dried gourds like tops." The first leaves that appeared look a bit like they've twisted themselves up out of the ground. In the nearby flower garden, the girls helped me sow Bee Feed Mix that includes more than a dozen pretty types of petals, from lavender to flax to coreopsis. We so appreciate all of the seeds!
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| Flowers and more from Sow True Seed |