grow my own vegetables

today I ate my first ripe red cherry tomato from my garden. It was absolutely delicious!!! I have an eggplant that is nice and ready to eat but I want to just let it grow until I get a few more tomatoes so i can eat them together.

The last frost is finally over! This week I planted tomatoes, cherry tom, green beans, corn, nm chile peppers, red bell peppers, cucumber, winter and summer squash, and eggplant. Just for fun I also got a sempervivum, wild looking cactus, and jade plant (which I put in a pot and will probably have to move indoors when it gets cold)

I also have been reading about kitchen compost and just started today. I just put some old mushrooms that were getting funky in my fridge and this mornings coffee grounds in a plastic container. Later today I will scoop up some leaves/weeds and add them. I have read that you are not supposed to use dog manueur but I am going to do it anyways. My plan is to only use dried poops from my dog and if it gets to be too much I will just throw it away like I have been doing. When my next coffee container is used up then I will use that for collecting the kitchen stuff. With the method I am using I think I will have some excellent compost in about 3 months.

I went ahead and ordered the dwarf citrus trees and am eagerly awaiting their arrival. I am now researching putting together a green house because I know the citrus will need a green house in the cold weather.

I also would like to figure out a way to economically grow mushrooms.

I rehabbed my outragiously hard desert clump soil and rehabbed it. Double dug the whole thing. pulled out weeds, plastic, trash and god knows what. Added organic compost and mushroom compost, worked it in. bought some plants, planted them. It seriously took all dang weekend, from early morning to late night. When I was finally done my back was really sore and my hands were so sore from using the shovel, axe, and pic that the next day I couldn’t open a jar.

Now i have a complete herb garden, plum tree, fig tree, rosemary, lavender, sage, strawberries, green and purple grape vines, black berry bush, and some gorgious cacti and succulents. ( I put those in a pot), oh yes and asparagous, beets, carrots, onions, snowpeas, lettuce and spinach. I am looking forward to a great harvest. After the last frost, I will plant squash, corn, tomatoes (big and cherry), eggplant, hotpeppers, green beans, cucumber.

I am still interested in the dwarf banana and orange trees but I am having a hard time picking out who to buy from. I am thinking that I might be better off just waiting until I also build a small green house in my back yard.

that’s what I heard on the news. I don’t know if it is true or not but I am glad that I will have some of my own food supply right in my garden!

I planted another fruit tree (now I have 2) and a berry bush and a grape vine.

Conditioning the soil took all darn day!... exhausting. My body was so tired the next day. But the soil looks great and I love looking at my little trees. I think they are wonderful!!!!

I finally dug up the dirt and man oh man did it need it. The dirt was so hard that a couple pieces I thought for sure were concrete at first, untill I busted the clump open. For my little 3 feet by 15 feet it actually took 2 whole days of work. The soil was that dang difficult. I thought about renting one of those tools used to break apart concrete but decided to stick with my industrial pick and shovel. Also, there wasn’t a single bug in the dirt, which means the soil is really unhealthy. I sprayed some water on it also to check the water drainage and it was horrible.

• add the richest compost I can find.
• add earthworms so they can help dig up the soil
• I may raise the beds and fill with compost. I am not sure if it is worth it.
• work the soil over even better than I have already so it is as loose as it possibly can be.

The soil is a little worse then the worse soil that I have prepared but I have been able to make a super thriving lush garden out of similar ground (with the addition of random plastic trash and beer cans thrown in) so I think this will work fine. I am thinking about adding a water hose with holes for drip watering.

I watered the fig tree. It is still winter so I can’t really tell if it has survived the winter or not. I hope it did. The nursery said it would be ok when I bought it the rosemary and lavender obviously didn’t make it and they said that would be ok also. I think about returning them but I feel a little ashamed and embarased to bring back an obviously dead plant. I know they will think it was my fault.

I made a list of all the seeds I have that are still good.
I will try to grow little seedlings of tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers this next week but if I am not so good at it then I plan to just buy the starter plants. I have had great luck with the seedlings but transplanting them outdoors is generally a problem.

I found these little dwarf orange and banana trees online and I think I will buy them and put them on my patio. I also found lots of plants on ebay at super cheap prices and I wonder if they are any good. if they are good then I could save a sweat bendle and end up with more plants. But if they are crappy then I would have wasted my time and money.

This next week I will finalize a list of what I want to buy and where and finallize my garden budget.
Start the lettuce, spinach, snowpeas in a container
Start the carrots, onions, beets in another container
dig up the dirt a little bit more, remove any weeds and roots which inevietably will become weeds once the soil is good.
start my seedlings!! (this is the most time sensitive this week)
Think about and plan my watering system.

I used to have a huge substantial garden and I ate out of it every single day. Now I live in a new place, which will be my home for a very long time, and I have nothing going on so far. I planted a fruit tree, which I really don’t know how it is doing since it is still winter and cold. I also planted a small rosemary and lavender at the same time. I am pretty sure they are dead now. I didn’t water them enough and they look soooooo brittle. I have some basil that is growing indoors and is hanging on for dear life since it barely has any light.

I planted some seeds in a 2 large pots outside but they haven’t been growing at all. I guess I will have to water them but I wonder if the seeds are too frozen to work? I have no idea.

• a plum tree
• berries , blueberry, raspberry, strawberry
• tomatoes
• cherry tomatoes
• eggplant
• summer squash
• winter squash
• snow peas
• green beans
• lettuce
• spinach
• cucumber
• bellpepper
• hotpeppers
• rosemary
• lavender

• wine grapes
• regular grapes
• mushrooms (edible only)
• fruit trees : peach, pears, appricots, oranges, oranges, oranges, lemons, limes, kiwi,

• egg laying hens – 2 initially, then add 1 per new family member
• milking goat
• milking cow

• wine making system.

I guess I should:
dig up the dirt and get the soil ready.
look at how many seeds I will need.
save money for materials
remember to water by fig tree so it lives