Our First Garden

This year, we started our first garden. When I was little my mom would do a lot of gardening. I loved it! My Grandpas usually always had gardens too, and there is nothing like fresh veggies from a garden. Although, beware when your Grandpa gives you peppers from his garden and tells you they're not hot.... I learned that lesson when I was little. I love hot/spicy foods now, but I still remember the burn of those peppers from when I was pretty young. 

This year, I really wanted to do my own garden. I've really enjoyed it! It also helps when your neighbors are really helpful, kind, and amazing gardeners themselves. They really saved us time by letting my husband use their motor pushing tiller! They've also helped me with tips and tricks that I had never heard of before. So thank you to them! 

My great Grandma says the best plants are the ones planted in the months that have an "R" in them, so I first started in April. It was a pretty little garden. I had two strawberry plants, two regular tomato plants, two cherry tomatoes, two bell peppers, two summer squashes, two zucchinis, and two cucumbers.  Soon after, where we're located, bad storms rolled in. After the first storm the cucumbers, zucchinis, and squashes had gotten so flooded that they all died. I was so upset, but glad that I didn't have to start completely over. Then, the next storm came and took with it one bell pepper plant, and both cherry tomatoes. That storm literally ripped the plants up out of the ground! We had a steady rain that followed for a few days and I just knew all the plants would drown.  We finally were greeted with quite a few days of sunshine, and as the garden started drying out, so did plant after plant. On the bright side we were left with both strawberry plants and one tomato plant. Not great after what we did have, but I was happy to have something left from what I first planted. 

A few weeks went by and we not only have replanted, but we've expanded our garden as well. 

Our sweet neighbors left a few tomato plants on our porch after the storms, because they saw that we lost all but one tomato plant. I got those planted along with a few more strawberry plants, two red bell peppers, yellow bell peppers, zucchini, and cucumber. I also added in some onion roots to try my hand at growing them. My Mom brought us some spaghetti squash seeds, loofa seeds, and some cilantro seeds since those are all doing really good in their garden. I added those in and our garden is pretty full now. I left room for summer squash and a couple cherry tomato plants that we haven't gotten yet. As of now, it's doing amazing with new garden soil and fertilizer. Our first tomato plant has two growing pretty fast, and my love of fried green tomatoes is making me want to pick them already...but I'll be patient. Our oldest, Roman, absolutely loves tomatoes, so this excites me so much! 

Our strawberries were growing as well on our first two plants that had made it and were even started to turn red. Sadly, we had an unwelcome guest that helped themselves and took every single strawberry with them. 😩

While reading all natural remedies for these pests, I came across a blog that discussed how animals and bugs would hate tasting any heat. Since I'm going the more organic route, I added cayenne pepper to my next watering pail and doused my plants in it. Once they start blooming again, I'll have some more and hopefully that will keep them away. All of our other plants are growing well. Our loofa seeds and spaghetti squash have also sprouted! None of our new plants have started blooming any veggies/fruits yet, but they look amazing. 

Our tomato plant that made it through the storms.

Two of our strawberry plants.

Our new growing tomato plants.

A line of our bell pepper plants.

One bell pepper about to bloom!

Zucchini growing so healthy.

Our cucumbers too!

The start of our loofas. Thanks Mom!

Before the storms, I also cleaned out the flower bed and planted a bunch of Zinnia's. With it getting pretty flooded as well, not too many of them made it, but they started sprouting. It took them quite a while to actually bloom, and because I got impatient to have a pretty flower bed and I wanted a variety mixture of flowers we picked up some more that were already bloomed and transferred them to the flower bed. The Zinnia's started blooming right after I got them all planted and it's just beautiful. I'm so happy with how it turned out!

Still have some cleaning up to do around them, but I love how well
they're looking together. The tall ones are the Zinnias.

The tall red flowers are Salvias in Vista red. The yellowish orange flowers
in front and to the right of them are Marigolds in Bonanza orange.
The Marigolds behind and to the left of them are Bonanza flame. 

Close up of a pink Zinnia.

Some more Zinnias. I'm so glad some of them still bloomed!

These green and maroon colored plants are Coleus the Fairway Series.

 If you have any tips and tricks on how to keep these pests away (looking for more organic/natural ways) from our strawberries that would be great! I also would appreciate any other advice on how you care for your own garden. I'll update again on our garden soon.