While I’m waiting for a script to run, figured I’d do a life update on the blog. I wanted to share something that I haven’t mentioned before on the blog and that is I enjoy gardening. Am I very good at it? Ehhhhhh. No but I enjoy it.
The first year we had the house, it was too late to plant anything. The following year, I only planted 3 tomato plants from Costco and my mother bought us 3 strawberry plants. Oh and I also got a jalapeno plant from Lowe’s. Figured what the heck? I used half of a bed. We have two of them that are like 16 feet? I think…Or 20. They aren’t tiny beds.
I learned 3 things that first year:
- Spacing guidelines are no joke.
- Cheap tomato cages can’t withstand the weight of big plants.
- Slugs SUCK and are a PAIN in the BOOTY to get rid of.
We got tiny strawberries if we were lucky. I tried drowning slugs in beer. There were just toooooo many. They just killed all the strawberries. We did get more tomatoes than anticipated. But with the early Sept snow (our wedding weekend), the tomato plants died fast. Not suprrisng.
This year, I started seedlings in February. Which honestly, was a weeeee bit early. I started 16 of the poop peppers (mushroom pepper cross breed), 4 jalapeno, 3 roma tomatoes, 3 cherry. Also some random herbs. It was quite fun watching them grow. They grew fairly fast too. I had a heating map and light.
Fast forward to May, I was super excited to move everything to the garden and the seedlings were outgrowing their little pods. They say wait until Mother’s Day weekend and I did. Well 2020 has been a year for insanity and that includes weather. Bring on June. June was cold weather wise. It didn’t snow, but it was cold and wet. That didn’t help my garden at all. I lost 2 of the poop pepper plants and one roma. Mother Nature was being a fickle pickle.
And then came July. And with it, 90-100 dg temps. Finally everything was growing. Now my cherry plants have outgrown their 6ft spikes and the 2 remaining roma plants are supplying with a lot. I’m still waiting on the pepper plants to turn the right color, but at least they are all growing!
With regards to the slugs, we got slug repellent. I was also on top of the weeding. I made sure the back of the bed and the area around would now allow any slugs to lay eggs. I think that was the biggie. Our strawberries were still a funky shape though. Apparently flies can do that? The answer is having Marigolds around. They attract the flies that make strawberries funky and kill them with their roots or something. Now if this was the absolute answer, I don’t know. But once I got them, the strawberries started to be a normal shape! Lastly, don’t forget the bird net. Which kept our squirrel out of the strawberries. She kept leaving empty nut shells out and about. Little twit.
Gardening was a popular COVID hobby this year since people weren’t supposed to leave their houses. I wonder what other people grew.
Some cross breed pepper 
So many tomatoes! 
Kai wanted to water the garden
Annnnnd now my script is done! Back to work I go!