Seeds to Harvest Gardening Challenge (Update July 9, 2011))

Let's see...What is going well this week in our garden? Well, this first picture shows what we harvested. Thank you, Lord! I think the watermelons are just about ready. They were Sugar Baby watermelons and don't get very large, but are supposed to be very sweet. The info that came with the plants we bought said they reach maturity in 73 days and we transplanted them the end of April. I don't know how many days that is exactly, but I guess it's pretty close. When I started pruning tomato plants, I discovered some cucumbers. Yay! Maybe there is some hope for them after all!

This weeks' harvest

My cute little helper

Garden Helpers

They are so cute! I think they make up for the poor gardening!

Okay, so what's not going so well in our garden you ask? Well, I believe we have Blossom End Rot on our peppers. I have researched a little about that, but I haven't figured out what to do yet. I thought that the soil mixture we used was supposed to prevent over watering, but then I also found out after I planted, that maybe I should have spread out my plants in different boxes. In other words, not planted all 12 pepper plants in one box. I'm learning.

By way of update on the tomatoes, I ended up pulling out two plants. I know, I know! That is very drastic! But, as you will see in the pictures, the plants were wilting and I hoped that by pulling out the two I would give the other two plants a better chance to survive and thrive. (I only paid 50 cents for each tomato plant, so it's not a huge loss.) In my research, I did read that when gardening in more northern climates with a shorter growing season, you do not need to prune the tomatoes. Here in southeast TN we have a pretty decent growing season and my plants had grown so much that they were bent over growing on the ground and they were not getting enough sunlight or enough sugar to the fruit because of all the new growth they were producing. At least that's what I understand at this point. So, the plant with full size tomatoes is looking better (you'll see it on the left in the picture below) but the cherry tomato plant on the right is withered pretty bad and although it still has tomatoes on it and they are still ripening, I am not sure how much longer it will last.

Our herbs are growing and look at the marigolds! I think that we might need to thin some of the herbs.

Here is the first tomato plant that I pruned. I stuck a fence post in and tied the plant to it for support. You can see in the picture below how yellow and diseased the tomato plants were getting from not getting enough sunlight because they were such a tangled mess and so thick.

I'm so embarrassed to even post this picture! My pitiful box of tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkin and cantaloupe. The only thing really growing in this box was the tomatoes! I don't believe the pumpkin and cantaloupe are going to make it, but now that I have taken out 2 of the tomato plants, maybe there will be a few more cucumbers. We'll see.

This is our box of peppers and watermelons. They both appear to be doing well, despite the fact that the watermelons are growing everywhere and the fence is caving in from the weight of the watermelons. I'm getting lots of peppers anyway! We planted and then I thought I had time to get the vertical supports built but I was too late and could only get enough conduit for 2 boxes and never did find the garden trellis netting locally.

So, that's my update for this week. And much like Olivia,
our host of this year's Seeds to Harvest Garden Challenge, I smile to keep from crying.
Well, in all honestly, I'm 8 months pregnant and I cry anyway!