Family Organic Garden Progress

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.
Tennessee Spinning Top Gourd
One Week after Planting
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!

Flowers and more from Sow True Seed