How does your garden grow

     My garden as been doing nicely since treating for pest and planting Marigolds.  My Cucumbers are in bloom and growing like crazy, We need to get the trellis up soon.







     The Green Beans are looking good and blooming nicely.  This is my first experience with both the cucumbers and green beans, so I'm excited to see that they are being successful.  I'm not sure about the green beans and a trellis.  I'm thinking I need to probably stake them.

  Feel free to leave me suggestions in the comments!

   The cucumbers are growing like crazy, so we finally found time to get the trellis up.

   We used a 1x2x8 which we cut in half and attached 4" square trellis netting. The vines attached to it with no problem. They seem to be very strong, but I'm interested to see how much support the cucumbers will need once they begin to fill in.


     My herbs are doing very well,  I'm able to gently harvest the basil and parsley.  I did not harvest the cilantro this week, but next week I should find some Tex-Mex Recipes to make. I should get at least one meal.  One of my favorite cilantro additions is to add it to H E B's Charro Beans. The fresh cilantro really adds a freshness to the canned beans.

     I do have a small problem with one side of the parsley leaves turning yellow.  I suspect it may be too much watering.  We did have some rain earlier in the week. I'll be keeping a close eye on it.

      As the week progressed, I noticed that something was chomping on my orange bell pepper leaves.  I've spent most of the weekend research the problem.

    The only beer I had was Shock Top, so that's what we went with.  After two nights of hunting, we came up dry.  Either I don't have slugs or snails, or the don't care for that brand.
   I've search high and low for caterpillars on every plant in the garden and so far I haven't found any.  I haven't noticed in snails or slugs either, but I thought I would set a beer trap anyway.
   I've read that squirrels and rabbits might eat them, but I think they would have eaten more than a few bites of leaves and only one plant.     I really don't think it's pests.  I read an article about a type of bee that may be causing the problem. I"ll see if I can find the article to reference it.  However if anyone has any suggestions as to what is happening feel free to share.




   My Cucumbers love their new trellis and the green beans are growing.  I have lot of cucumber and green bean blossoms and as you can see they are producing quite nicely.  I'm looking forward to a great crop of each.


  My next blog will be about setting up our automatic drip system.  With our busy schedule that will be a must during the summer months.

Little Black Bugs / new parsley plant / harvesting the herbs/ planting marigolds and annuals and accessories for the garden

 

     Earlier this week, I was making chicken quesadillas and charro beans, and I just couldn't resist going out to the garden and trimming off a little cilantro.  I've had cilantro store bought and I've planted cilantro in my aerogarden to transplant in a container, but I have to tell you, boys and girls, I've never had cilantro that was this fresh or had such a flavorable taste and aroma.  It was spectacular and I know I'll get a lot of enjoyment from that plant.



After taking a good look at the garden I decided that i needed one more plant to complete my herb garden.  This time I picked up a curly parsley plant.  It was rather large , so after planting it, I did harvest a small amount of the parsley, basil, and garlic chives to make with the nights roasted potatoes to go with dinner.  They were absolutely delicious.  I'll be making herb roasted  potatoes more often!

      

     

    

 About mid week I noticed that my green beans weren't looking as healthy as I'd like .  Once I took a good look at the leaves I could see some black critters running around, so I took a good look at the rest of the garden and I decided that et was time for our first round of pest control  Since I'm still new at this I dediced to go with the pesticide pictured .  If anyone has any pest control suggestions, feel free to comment below.

                                                                                                            

 My garden is almost complete, but I feel that it needs to some minor touches to spruce it up.  I had the planters and dirt already, so I decided to plant some marigold and annuals, just to give the garden a little pop of color. As you can see I was trying to plant in between rain showers, and of course, that was the only time it rained all day!

Today, I went to my local dollar store to see what I could find to bling out my garden and I found three of the cutest, bling y, stones and and whirl y wind thingy (yes that is a technical term).  I am absolutely  loving the look of my garden.  The Orange bell peppers are blooming, as well as the cucumbers, two of the tomato plants and the chocolate bell pepper.  Things are looking good so far.

Now all that left is the trellis for the Cucumbers and Green Beans!

Romane Lettuce growing in my AeroGarden

These are clipping off of my mothers fig tree that
I've had for almost a year now.   Mom's been gone
20 years now, so  let's see what I can do with these. 

And more pictures of our beautiful Texas Spring Wildflowers!