this little life of mine

Well, our little Earthbox garden is done for the season. Yesterday I went out and harvested some peppers and tomatoes for dinner, and today mom and I decided it was time to take the plants out, so I brought in the rest of the peppers and one more little tomato that seemed to pop up over night. 

I'm kinda sad to see the end of the garden (mostly going to miss those sweet, delicious tomatoes!!), but I'm looking forward to next year. We're planning to just get 2 bush goliath tomatoes next year because the one we had this year was the best producer and we just weren't impressed by the big beef tomato, and a couple bell peppers, and I might even do zucchini again, or try something else.

Cheers! 

Two Sundays ago I went out and took my weekly garden pics, but never got them resized or posted due to having put a bunch of my rubber stamps for sale on eBay, and subsequently selling them all within a couple hours. So then there was packing and printing and shipping, and gah! Why can't all my crap super good quality stuff sell this fast??

Then this past weekend I ended up with a cold that I'm despiratly trying to get over quickly since the Central Coast Writer's Conference is this coming up this weekend and my vacation with my mom to Cambria is next Monday thru Thursday. So I never even made it outside to harvest the few little tomatoes I can see from the kitchen window, let alone take a new set of pictures.

Anyway, the other night I was playing with one of my favourite photo sites, dumpr.net, and decided to do my garden pictures in lomo, just to be different. (BTW, dumpr looks.net has the best lomo filter for pictures,  IMHO.) So, here's what the garden looked like a couple weeks ago. It probably hasn't changed much.

Everything is crazy huge. My pepper plants are both pretty loaded down with peppers in various shapes, sizes and even colours. A lot of them have been turning red, and some have a little orange in them, too.  They have all been delicious sauteed in a little EVOO!

The Big Beefsteak tomato plant itself is ginormous, but the tomatoes never got too terribly big. They have been delicious, though, sweet and meaty, and hopefully we'll get some more over the next couple weeks.

We did get some pretty good-sized, uber juicy and delicious tomatoes off the Bush Goliath plant, but they're starting to fizzle out, too.  This plant was so successful we're planning to just get two fo them next year and skip the beefsteak.

I think the garden may be just about done for this year. The tomatoes are not getting as large, and there are fewer and fewer blossoms on the plants. The weather is finally (hopefully?!?) changeing from the hideously hot summer to a somewhat cooler fall, and I think in a few weeks we'll be saying farewell to the garden of 2012.

OMG. Check out this garden:

It's huge and we're suddenly getting tons of produce!

Both pepper plants are going strong. The little one has some baby peppers and blossoms, and the bigger one has several big peppers that are slowly going red. I left them and just took a nice big green bell and a couple little ones that were slightly burned. 

And, the tomatoes! Holy cow! The Big Beef tomato plant has exploded! Although none of the toms are very big, they're very red and juicy and delicious!

My Bush Goliath tomato plant, however, has several very good sized toms, most of which were ready to harvest today, too. Although they're not ginormous, either (I think it's been too hot and they're ripening faster than they're growing), they are the best tasting tomatoes I've ever had!

And, I love this awesome harvest bag from Fiskars! 

I was lucky to have it today as I ended up harvest a LOT of tomatoes and really needed something other than the bottom of my shirt to carry them in. 

Here's my haul in all its bright red glory:

Cheers!

As you can see from the series of photos below, our Earthbox garden is going like gangbusters! I harvested four more tomatoes from the Bush Goliath plant - the largest of which made for a delicious bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich! - and noticed the Big Beef tomato plant is looking like it might give us some fruit eventually as well. As for the peppers, the largest plant is still busting out ginormous peppers, all of which I'm keeping on the plant as long as possible in the hopes that they'll go red (although I don't have a picture of it yet, the kinda red one I picked a week or so ago has along completely changed colour! I'll try to remember to get a piccie of it before I roast it!), and the little plant we thought wasn't going to make it actually has TWO good sized peppers on  it!

In the front, all of my roses are doing very well. The Midas Touch has not stopped blooming all summer and my two mini red rose bushes are both growing and blooming!

How's your garden doing??

It's a little warm today, so the garden is a little droopy, but it's still doing pretty well.

The bush goliath tomato plant is stuffed with tomatoes, a couple of which were ready to harvest:

This little critter (I'm guessing it's a caterpillar??) tried hitching a ride on my tom. I transferred him to our tree where he'll hopefully be okay.

My Big Beef tomato plant is still huge, but still not really producing much except a few mutant-looking toms:

The peppers are both still going strong, too. The big plant has several big peppers on it. I really want to hold out to see if they will turn red, but I'm afraid the plant will break off with the weight of them, so I took, a couple in. The little plant actually has a tiny pepper starting on it which is pretty exciting!

Here is my haul for the day. These guys are going in a pasta salad for lunch - yum!

Cheers!

Well, our little Earthbox garden is going along just fine! No ripe tomatoes this week, but the Bush Goliath tomato plant is quite full of good-sized green ones, so we should be getting some soon. Also, I noticed the Big Beef tomato plant is finally starting to get some more little green tomatoes on it. I'm curious to see how big they actually get! As for the peppers, the one on the right is still going strong, and has a couple peppers I could harvest, but I'm holding out to see if they'll turn red, and the runt ont he left I think might actually have grown a little bit! There may be hope for it yet!

Hopefully I'll be better at updating our growing garden during July than I was in June. We've already harvested one tomato and I'm sure there is at least one more ready to be picked. Let's find out!

Here is our Bush Goliath tomato plant. We got our first tomato of this one and it looks like there's a couple more ready to go!!!

This ginormous monstrosity is our Big Beef tomato plant. We only have this one odd-shaped little "frankentom" so far, but the bush is covered with blossoms, so I'm still hopeful!

Okay, so I just don't know what to think about the sad, little dwarf pepper plant on the left there. It's not dying, but it's not really growing, either. The other pepper plant is doing really well, and even had a pepper ready to pick!

For lunch yesterday I used both tomatoes and the pepper in a pasta tuna salad - it was SO yummy! The tomatoes were juicy and sweet and the green bell pepper was really sweet, too!

Cheers!

This week in the garden: the tomato plants are doing very well - especially the Big Beef which is HUGE! - and one pepper is getting big while the other one is doing, well, nothing.

I have no idea what is up with that one pathetic little pepper. It's not all dried up and dead, it's just not growing. *shrugs* The rest of the back yard is looking pretty good.

Our zinneas are still blooming as is our lavender. We took out another cat mint plant and put our sun dial in its place. I think it looks much better!

I love all our little statuary, and I really like these two "rocks" we found at the Paso Robles T.J. Maxx store!

Our little Earthbox garden is doing really quite well:

Both the Goliath and Beefsteak tomato plants look great and have either blossoms or little tomatoes on them:

Only one of our peppers is growing; the other is still stunted and although it still looks green and healthy, I don't think it will survive:

Out front my Midas Touch rose is going gangbusters!

The first blooms on the two miniature roses are done, but one of the buses has a new little bud on it!

In the back, the grasses and shrubbery have started taking over, so we took some clippers to them and tamed them a bit:

We also cut back the dead irises and finally hung my ceramic sun:

So far I'm quite optimistic about our little garden and yard. Most of the plants look great and are producing or blooming or getting ready to bloom. Until next week ... cheers!

Hello and welcome to my first gardening update for 2012! We're one week in and so far everything looks pretty good!

The Bush Goliath tomato plant already has two little green toms on it:

And, the Big Beefsteak has some blossoms:

I'm SO looking forward to some big, juicy, delicious tomatoes this summer!

Here are my little bell peppers. They both have little buds on them, but one seem to be growing faster than the other. 

The rest of the backyard is doing very well, too. In fact, a little TOO good. I'll have to do some trimming here pretty soon! Those stupid cat mint bushes are outrageous again! AND, they're SPREADING!!! 

The yellow flowers are coming back in full force - they're so pretty!

Speaking of full force, I can't believe how well these white flowers have come back. I thought they were just annuals, and over the winter we didn't even water them!

I found this little fella sunning himself on one of my dry creekbed rocks:

Turning to the front yard, my two miniature roses seem to be doing okay - there's new growth on both of them - but there are no new buds! I don't know if they're going to bloom again, and I'm going to have to remove the dying blooms pretty soon.