Garden updates!

Not much to say about it, other than we're enjoying the salads at the moment. Can't wait for the tomatoes to turn red so we can add them. Squash has lots of blooms on it as does the zucchini and the fruits are finally starting on those. In a couple of days the beans will have enough that I can add them to what we're having for the night, just no enough for us to have just green beans. They'll have to be mixed in (like added to a soup). Check out the pictures below! I took the pictures from my bedroom so you could see how big the plants have gotten. I don't know if the eggplant is going to survive since the zucchini kinda went crazy. (It's the plant on the right. No I didn't do anything special to it. I honestly don't know why they do that to me. When ever I plant the stuff it goes wild on me and we end up with lots of zucchini bread frozen for the winter. Its a favorite with my family so I'm lucky there. But I didn't do anything except put it in an area that I know holds more water than normal. It gets sun for only about half the day. I didn't add any fertilizers, or use anything for bugs either. We're working on animals in science and the habitats of those animal. Our youngest is really into bugs so I can't really kill them. The purple cabbage is a first this year but it seems to be happy. There are eight plants in the middle there and I'm a little worried that they're going to crowd each other out. I'm not sure if the carrots are still under there or not. And the same goes for the onions. I guess I'll find out this fall, lol. The beans on the far right side are all happy as well. And as you can see the lettuce and spinach is looking sad since we can't stop ourselves from picking at it. I need to put some more in. My wonderful parsley is in the round container. The chives and oregano keep disappearing (I think thanks to our youngest daughter) before they can really get going. I've put in two sets of seeds and they'll start and then they disappear again, lol. Our hanging gardens aren't liking all the rain here lately. You can see the yellow leaves on the tomatoes an cucumbers. Although I don't think we'll put cucumbers in them again. They don't seem to be doing very well. The tomatoes all wanted to grow upward and have finally started to turn upside down due to their weight. I think they also needed much more sun. We don't really have a place that we can put them that they would of gotten a lot of sun. I'm glad that we got a plot. I added a bunch of tomato plants out there. Oh well this is the girls science project that goes along with our history on the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Well we need to know that just because a science experiment doesn't go the way we had hoped that there is still something to learn. The flowers on tops are beautiful. The primrose on top of our oldest's closed up because we had yet another rain starting. Enjoy the view as we do!

Spring is in the air?

With the first day of Spring being the 20th of March this year we're looking forward to the warmer weather. Although it looks as if mother nature is making sure to get the cold weather in one way or another this year. We have a week of nice warmer weather only to have it turn cool again. We are getting ready to start our seeds since they are saying this will be our last cold spell. I decided this year to spend the money to purchase two Hanging Gardens from Sams this year. They don't have them on their website and I'm still looking for a link for them. I will add the link if I ever find one. If I can get the camera charged I will put a picture of them on here for everyone. They are nice since we will be able to put up to six plants hanging and then smaller plants on top. We'll be hanging tomatoes and cucumbers and we're not real sure what we'll be putting on top just yet. I decided this would be a good science project to add to the curriculum also. We'll be doing a simple journal made out of plain white paper folded in half with a piece of construction paper on the outside. The children can decorate the outside cover as they like, hopefully with some encouragement it will be themed towards a garden. Might have a princess added too since they are girls. Then we will be able to draw pictures and do our copy work on each page as the different stages of plants grow. I'm also considering doing a lapbook. A member of our homeschooling group was kind enough to show us these at our last meeting. I really like the idea of them. You can do a search for them and find lots of information on them. This may be better for our oldest child, I'm not sure if our youngest would have the patience for this. I may consider doing it as a group activity too. Since the youngest would like the cutting and pasting, the oldest the reading and finding of facts, and I could help with the writing since some of the areas to write in are small. One thing I find hard is there are so many really good ideas out there that I want to try them all sometimes. We've tried some things and although they are good ideas they just don't work for us so we put them aside and move on. We've also found that some things work for one of our girls but just isn't right for the other. I'm learning that sometimes pushing through just isn't a good idea. Learning is taking on a new meaning in this house, and we're loving it!