Gardening Results

Now that Ame & I own our home, I have been interested in gardening again. This year's effort was pretty modest and experimental in nature. I was mainly attempting to find good locations for the kinds of plants I wanted to grow, namely: several varieties of Sunflowers; herbs such as cilantro and basil; vegetables such as cucumbers and bell peppers. I planted green, yellow, orange, and red peppers.

Of course, that means that I found places that were not well suited for certain plants. Also, despite a good amount of area, very little of it gets direct sunlight, which limits production. The front of the house gets the most direct sun.

The sunflowers thrive in direct sunlight, and look great in front of the house to boot. The Mammoth Sunflowers grew ridiculously tall. I thought 8 feet would be enough room under the roof line!

They are heavy with seeds, many of which will be saved for next year's plantings. That's a big deal, because ten of the sunflower plants sprouted on the day Isabel was born. I'm very excited about propagating those plants by saving the seeds. We'll always have Isabel sunflowers!

This fits in with our tradition of planting our Christmas trees. We planted the first one this year on New Years Day, and it has thrived.

I planted four cucumber plants, and have reaped the first five cucumbers. Beware, my co-workers. You will soon have cucumbers for your salads to last the next month. I know I do already.
The peppers are really late. The reason is that I left my starter plants in flats, and happened to be away from home in April when we had an unexpected heat wave, with 80-degree temperatures. They all died. In fact, only the herbs and sunflowers survived that heat. I learned the lesson: Get the plants into the ground! The second flats of peppers are now beginning to produce fruits. In about two weeks, I'll be overwhelmed with peppers.

I will plant more basil next year. I planted ten of the lemon basil variety, and they are only now really full with leaves. I've only enjoyed the leaves sparingly, because I've wanted to make sure there would be enough to make a pesto. Next year, it will be ten traditional basil and ten lemon plants. Now I have enough for the pesto.

See me for cucumbers and peppers!