Vegetable Garden : Deer and Our First Harvest

In my last vegetable garden update, we were just watching as everything was growing... and that is pretty much what we did this month. We love to walk out to our garden every day or two and check out the progress of the vegetables. 

The girls love to help water and look around for any new baby veggies or fruits. We have a couple watermelons and Cora has named some of them (Mama watermelon, baby watermelon, butt watermelon, etc). Ida mostly loves to find a dirt spot in the bed and dig around for a bit.

We have had lots of baby tomatoes growing... but we also have a couple deer that love to come snack in our garden. They have eaten every single tomato except a green one that Cora accidentally picked. We haven't had a chance to build up a fence, so I guess now we're just growing them to feed the deer.

Along with all of our tomatoes being snacked on, the zucchini got a little fungus thing on it's leaves... which has basically killed most of the plants. I trimmed off all the infected leaves, but I'm afraid it's too late in the season for anything else to grow. There is always next year!

We had our first harvest last week! We picked four sweet peppers and one red bell pepper. It wasn't much, but it was exciting to get something that we have been watching grow for weeks.

We still have some salsa peppers, tomatoes (if the deer don't get them) and watermelon growing... so we are looking forward to being able to harvest those when the time is right.

Vegetable Garden : Watching Things Grow

Looking back at our garden last month, I'm amazed at how it has changed in such a short amount of time. This month, we added watermelon plants and some zucchini and cucumber seedlings. I've done a bit more reading and figured out that part of my problem last year was watering too much. Even though we visit the garden beds on a daily basis, I've taken a step back and water way less often.

We get so excited each and every time we see a new little baby vegetable growing. Right now we have some baby tomatoes, baby Roma tomatoes, baby sweet peppers, and baby red bell peppers. Our plants are getting so big and there are tons of flowers all over all of them... so we're hoping for lots and lots of veggies.

One of our beds is mostly full with our watermelon plants. The below picture was less than a week ago and it's at least two times bigger than this. The vines have started to cascade out of the bed and Ben accidentally mowed over one, but the other ones are growing nicely. Because there are some empty spots in that bed, Ida loves to bring her tools out and dig a little bit each time we check on our plants.

We put out our Mother's day flower pots on the garage windowsill to liven the patio space up a bit. Those plants have been thriving since we put them outside and I like that I can see them from my kitchen window.

I love watching our girlies check on the plants, dig a bit, and cheer over each new baby vegetable that we find. This has been a fun project for all of us and we can't wait for our first harvest.

Vegetable Garden: Getting Things Planted

We had a bit of a false start to our garden with the seeds we started indoors. When I got my wisdom teeth out, I must have forgotten to water them or something and almost everything died... It's all a learning experience and we enjoyed watching them grow. 

Around Easter, we started setting up the raised beds, lining them with cardboard, and then adding in some bags of dirt. I severely underestimated the amount of dirt that I would need and barely filled one bed halfway. We planted some of the beans outside, but that ended up being another fail due to the weather (womp, womp). Despite all the failures so far this season, we're still enjoying ourselves. The girls love watering our plants, digging in the dirt, and running around outside.

My dad gifted me a dirt delivery for Mother's day and it was the perfect gift. The girls loved it! They climbed all over the pile while I worked hard filling the beds. I'll use the remainder of the dirt to fill in some wonky spots in our yard and front garden.

Cora's school had a fundraiser with Benken, so I purchased a flat through them and picked up a bunch of vegetables. I picked some tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, sweet peppers, bell peppers, spaghetti squash, zucchini, and some watermelon. I'm loving how easy it is to start a garden from plants.

I didn't really plan the garden out much, but I'm giving each plant plenty of room and I'm hoping it just works out well. We started a couple seeds last week and planted them early this week. We still have a couple plants to put out here, but it's shaping up nicely so far this year.

-----------------

Balcony Makeover

My mom felt bad for my lack of patio furniture (puhlease, I do have a folding chair) so she gave me this table.  It was a little rusted and she thought it would be a good project for me.  I was going to go with a safe black or white, but I decided to go out on a limb and aimed for a tropical/Miami beach inspired balcony.

First, I had to take care of my hibiscus tree that has been sitting in the plastic container it came in when I bought it.  I purchased a large pot that was approximately $9.  I taped off the top and spray painted the bottom with Rust-oleum Satin Lagoon, and added a clear coat.

Something went wrong in the process... Lack of prep, not letting the turquoise spray paint dry before I put the clear coat on,  not letting it all dry before I potted the tree, the humid day and damp night.... whatever happened, I had a bunch of bubbles under the paint.  I just flattened them out with my finger and there is a little texture left over.  Like all my screw ups that result in texture, I like how it turned out so I'm not really worrying about it.


Next, I turned to my table.  I scraped, brushed, and sanded the table down.  I primed the rusty spots, but didn't really want to spend time priming the whole thing.

For the color, I drew inspiration from a jacket I have from Gap that is very similar to this one.  Mine is last years version, a little thicker, but the same color.  I purchased some Glidden Pink Salmon paint and started painting.  As you can tell, I'm super good at painting.

I moved inside because I wasn't sure how the humidity would affect the paint... and the AC was nothing to complain about.

I put about three or four coats on and then added a clear finish at the end.  Throughout the process I wavered between liking the color and not liking the brightness of it.  Now that it is finished, I'm really liking the tropical feel.  Here is the final balcony:

 What do you think of the coral and turquoise color combo?

 
Linked to Flower Hill Design for Outdoor Extravaganza, check it out!

update :: here is a new picture from the outside: