Check out my new tomato plants. They’re actually not new, they’re suckers I pinched from my other plants. My first year gardening, I sent my parents a photo (below) of my tomato plants and my dad took one look and said, “Amanda needs to get rid of those suckers.” And I responded, “What are you
We’ve been harvesting Hungarian wax peppers, zucchini and fistfuls of herbs for a few weeks. But there’s something about that first tomato (and a week of 100+ degree days) that says: Summer is Here.
Aside from the harvest, this is one of my favorite stages of gardening. When you go outside and notice a handful of cherry tomatoes that seemed to appear overnight. Or tiny jalapenos dropping from the stem. (I noticed a half-eaten jalapeno on the ground. I hope it was hot enough to teach the chipmunks a
When we moved to our current house, we left behind a backyard with something like 10 hours of sunlight, a gorgeous iris bed, and a strawberry patch. It took two years for our strawberries to get established, send out runners, and really produce. When I bought new strawberry plants to start a patch at our
Our vegetables are finally in the ground. Most of my seedlings didn’t survive, so I had no choice but to fill in the gaps with plants from a local greenhouse. It is humbling to admit that here on the world wide web. It’s also humbling to admit that buying seedlings rather than growing plants from
Sugar snap pea flowers can only mean one thing… Sugar snap pea pods are on their way.
According to the Farmer’s Almanac, the last frost date in Richmond was April 6. That means our garden is two days from being a month late. The gutters are still doing great, but the only thing growing in the ground is grass and our neighbor’s liriope (which doesn’t seem to respect the boundaries of our
It’s been almost a month since we built our gutter garden, and a few days ago we had our first salad from early greens. Check it ouuuut. See the sugar snap peas climbing up my make-do-with-what-you-have trellis? It doesn’t look pretty, but the peas don’t mind. This is something I inherited from my dad. Why
A few weeks ago, around the same time we made our gutter garden, we planted a bunch of seeds. I always start veggies from seeds because it’s cheaper than buying plants. Usually I don’t have much trouble, but I figure that if something doesn’t sprout then I can always buy the plant when it’s time
Spring is just around the corner, so we’ve started some seeds indoors and are planning our garden. In our last home our backyard was small, but it was perfect for a garden. The term “full sun” was invented for our backyard; there was only shade when the sun was down. In the summer it felt