Organic Vegetable/Fruit Garden

After paying $1.69 for one green pepper earlier this year, we decided to plant our very own vegetable garden. And then we thought, why not make it organic! Orlando's city dump makes their own compost, processes it to remove non-organic materials, runs it through a machine to make it fluffy, and gives it away for free. We took our truck into town and filled up the bed with free compost. That was on 18 April. The very next day we started planting seeds and plants. Never having done this before, we weren't sure how to do the seeds. The instructions on the packets were ridiculously complicated. We figured that since we live in Florida, they don't really apply to us anyway. Seed inside for 4-6 weeks? Whatever. We made a line in the compost with our fingers, dumped in the entire packet, threw a little dirt on top, and then watered every day. Well, every day until the rainy season started.

18 April 2009






19 April



Tomato plants in the back, green beans in the back and side right, broccoli on the left in front of the tomatoes, then carrots to the right of that, then cucumbers next to the green beans, butternut squash plant in the front on the left (next to a cucumber plant that died), and finally the whole front down to the green beans is pumpkins. But not baking pumpkins. Nope! I went for the pumpkins with the cute jack-o-lanterns on the envelopes. What can I say, it was our first time with a garden and I was excited. :)


22 April-- the broccoli sprouts



27 April-- everything has sprouted



How cute is that garden? We all went out there every day and talked to it. Oooed and ahhed over it. So. Darn. Cute.

06 May-- we begin to think we overplanted



01 June-- yep, we overplanted





Does anyone want a jack-o-lantern? Or ten??





But then, how cute is this squash?



I seriously want to kiss the little guy. Adorable!


Our orange tree is looking great. Come January we will start boxing them up to send to family.




As for the garden...I'll post more when we start harvesting our bounty. I'm wondering why I bought 8 tomato plants when I'm allergic to them, but I'm sure our neighbors will be excited. We do have a Saturday morning farmer's market on Main Street in our little town. I can just see myself pulling up with a truck bed full of pumpkins. Jeez.