Dude. Guess what I had for dinner.

Yum, yum, gimme some! I had quite the meals today! For lunch-LETTUCE from the garden! For dinner-stir fry with BOK CHOI and CILANTRO from the garden! Woohoo! All I can say is that both were absolutely amazing.

I have some good news, and tons of bad news about this bad boy. First off, the good stuff. Four of the six tomato plants have itsy-bitsy tomatoes on them and they all have tons and tons of blossoms. The greens bean plants are starting to climb my chain link trellis and look like they will be coming in just fine. The sugar snap peas, yellow squash, cabbage, cucumbers, and assorted peppers seem to be right on schedule. Sounds great, right? Well, here's the bad. TONS of grass still all over this bad boy. I'm tilling in between every row and each individual plant at least once a week, and I'm still getting waaaaay too much grass popping up in between. It's a little frustrating, to say the least. My yellow beans were over run by grass and weeds and I've had to till them up and start over in that section. No swiss chard. No beets. Only one or two okra plants out of 20. They'll be replanted this week. Corn is growing very, very slowly and I'm not too hopeful. My old guy's corn next door is already up to knee level. Jerk. That's the last time I help him till anything up.

I've come to the realization that I have too much space and not enough plants. My pops-in-law encouraged me to put in some field peas, so I'll probably do a couple bushes of those and a couple bushes of black beans. They'll go in this week too. I've got four different kinds of hot peppers coming up now-anaheim, jalapeno, poblano, and habanero. I've got a couple friends that absolutely love spicy stuff, so I'm gonna drop a little hotness on them.

I'll put some more pics up in the next couple days, but I spent about three hours out there today, so I'm pooped. Have a good one!

Like I Said. Pics.

Yeah, so, for some reason, my garden is Bok Choi friendly. I have no explanation, but these guys have been growing from seed really well and will probably be the first to be ready for harvest.

This is a pretty good long shot that gives you a good idea of the size of the garden. You can see some corn sprouting in the foreground, my rosebush in the far corner, and my 80 year old neighbor's rockin' garden. Much respect.
Righteous Rosebush. I didn't trim or cut it back at all this year because I wanted to see how it would grow and how many blossoms I would get. Um, yeah, tons.
Tomatoes! They're getting big and bushy and already have tons of blossoms on each plant. Good stuff.

It looks like I'm going to have to give up on the idea of growing my peppers from seed this year. I haven't been able to get any sprouts for either the poblanos or the jalapenos. I'm gonna head to Lowe's this week and buy two plants of each and hope that they'll grow for me. I'm also going to replant a lot of my cucumbers. A couple have sprouted, but I'm really hoping for bushels of them so I went ahead and tilled up the row that they really weren't coming in on. I'll replant today or tomorrow depending on the weather.

Check out the new album from The National! You won't regret it, I promise.

Um, Yeah, My Bad.

Ok, no stones thrown please! It's been pretty tough for me for the past few weeks because I have some pretty intense allergies this time of year and have been trying to get my meds correct. Sorry!

Here's the update. I have gone through the entire garden pulling weeds, tilling, raking, and doing all those other things I hate. I have also gotten all of my crops in the ground and I'll try to give you an update on them one by one.

• Tomatoes-All six plants are still alive and absolutely thriving. They have all tripled in size and most of them are already showing blooms, which is a good thing. The more blooms, the more fruit you get. If I'm guessing right, I'll probably start getting fruit in a few weeks.
• Green Beans-The plants are up and growing. Pretty soon they'll be tall enough for me to start leading them onto their supports.
• Yellow beans-NONE! I really can believe it. I planted them at the same time as the green beans, but haven't had a single one come up. In the next few days I'll run my tiller down the row and plant more green beans. They'll be a little behind the others, but that's ok. We have a pretty long growing season here, so I'm not worried.
• Green Peppers-About half of the nine plants have survived. They're growing, but slowly. I have never had much luck with any kind of bell peppers, so any help will be appreciated. I haven't watered them much, since we've had so much rain, but I'm really not sure what to do to help them.
• Cucumbers-The first row of cukes was so infested with grass that I went ahead and plowed them up. I put in four hills with three plants each to replace them and each hill has had at least one plant come up and start to grow. I'll just have to keep my eye on them.
• Yellow Squash-I planted about twenty feet, or five plants, of squash and they have all sprouted and begun to grow. Squash is still the easiest thing I've ever put in the ground. It doesn't need water, it kills all the weeds around it, and produces tons of fruit per plant.
• Jalapenos-I planted seeds, not purchased plants for this one. I haven't seen any plants emerge, but it's still been only two weeks since I put them in. There are only three plants, so I can easily go out and buy plants to replace these if they don't come up. I really want to make my own salsa with these guys, so I've got to have them.
• Poblano Peppers-Same as the Jalapenos. Three plants, planted at the same time, haven't seen any growth, will buy to replace, salsa. =)
• Beets-I planted about twenty of these guys. They've sprouted, so I'm hopeful! I have some pretty fond memories from childhood about them, so I can't wait to start canning, preserving, and feasting on my own.
• Sugar Snap Peas-Dude. Has to be my favorite veggie. You can eat 'em raw, put 'em in stir fries (fryes?frys? yeah, whatever.), and they're incredibly easy to freeze. They're coming up and I haven't yet figured out how to build a trellis to put them on. Yeah, I've got to get on that soon.
• Bok Choi-definitely the biggest success of my early plantings. Every seed has come up, and they're getting huge! They're about four inches high with well developed heads. I haven't grown them before, so hopefully I'll know when they're big enough and when I need to pull them up. Plants talk, right?
• Swiss Chard-Stupid swiss chard. Not a single seed developed. I've got a twenty foot long empty row. Should I try again? Put something else in? I was really excited about trying chard, so I may try again. We'll see.
• Cabbage-Most of the seeds I planted are coming up, but the heads have not begun to develop yet. I need to look them up and see how long it's supposed to take.
• Lettuce-Growing, growing, growing. I picked a kind of lettuce that doesn't develop a head, but matures like romaine. I'll probably pick some of it in the next week or so, plant more to replace what I picked, and pick the rest when it gets bigger.
• Corn-They're about a foot tall and developing still. My father in law gave me some advice about supporting them by piling dirt all around their bases as they grow, so I'll definitely be doing that soon. I also need to go to Tractor Supply (dude, that place is awesome. It's a gardening nerd's dream. I'm buying one of those straw hats.) to pick up some nitrogen pellets to place next to the plants. It's supposed to help them develop.

Whew. I may have missed a plant, but I don't think I did. I'll check later to be sure, but I'm pretty positive that this is all of them. As you can see, I've been busy, but I'm really fortunate that I got as early a start as I did. With all the rain we've had, there's no way that the ground would have been dry enough for me to do any tilling later than I did. The rain has also been helped me not feel as guilty about having to stay indoors for the past couple weeks to hide from the dirty, evil, vile pollens. Stupid pollen. So necessary, so painful.

The next post will probably be entirely pictures, so look for it in the next couple days! If you ever decide to start your own garden, say goodbye to the rest of your yard. It takes up so much of my time that I don't mow as often as I should, don't weed my front flower beds, and don't really care that I'm missing them. Oh, well. Time to go blow my nose!

Here's what I've been listening to outside as I've been ankle deep in dirt.

Eric Clapton's Unplugged, Band of Horses's Cease to Begin, Passion Pit, and Bob Dylan's Slow Train Coming, Blonde on Blonde, and Times Are Changin'