A Garden Update

A little over a month has gone by since I planted my garden. Some plants have taken off and are growing like crazy and a few have withered in the heat. I wanted to share some before and after photos with you.

You can see that everything looks bigger except for the strawberries. Between our dog digging them up a few weeks ago and not getting enough water, there is only one strawberry plant surviving. You can see however that the Bush Star Melon on the left has really taken off.

I am afraid that it might take over the entire garden if I’m not careful. The plant has many tendrils wrapping themselves around the stakes and wires set up around it.

Check out the before/after photos of my tomato, tomatillo and basil plants.

I didn’t think that my yellow pear tomato plant had produced any more fruit, but Joe spied two tomatoes hiding in the center of the plant.

So we ate them.

I had mine plain. Joe enjoyed a basil leaf with his tomato.

The real pick of the day though was from our Costa Rican Sweet Red Pepper plant.

Joe and I had been watching one of the peppers slowly getting redder and redder out of his window. We decided yesterday that it had to be ready. He was very excited to try it and ended up eating more than a few slices. The pepper was very sweet, even sweeter than a red bell pepper you would buy at the store. We have two more peppers on the plant, one that is almost ready to be picked.

Once again, it made me happy to share the experience of growing our own food with my son. I love the fact that he walked out there, picked a tomato and a basil leaf and shoved them into his mouth saying “yummm!” Also, after eating some of the red bell pepper, Joe started asking to try the other vegetables that I was preparing to roast. He wanted to see what they all tasted like. Even mushrooms! He didn’t like everything, but he wanted to try everything.

So even though our strawberry plants have taken a beating, I would call our garden a success so far.