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!

My first raised vegetable garden bed on the bay

     I live in a small town on the Texas Gulf Coast,  San Leon, Tx  The locals call it a drinking town with a fishing problem.   Every morning you can see the shrimp boats headed out to catch our delicious Gulf Shrimp ( It's my favorite, well that and Maryland Crab Cakes).  

The view from our front deck

I moved here about 9 months after Hurricane Ike and I've always gardened but only in container or my Aerogarden.

My past attempts at growing vegetables 

More container plants

I have lettuce growing in my AeroGarden right now

     As you can tell, my containers really needed to be replaced this year, so I decided to trash the containers and build a raised bed.  The dirt on the gulf coast isn't the best for gardening, plus we have a lot of oyster shells mixed in our dirt.  I decided that instead of buying new containers and dirt, we should build a small raised bed instead.  My husband, who LOVES fresh vegetables, agreed to build it for me.

     We didn't have much of a winter this year, actually in January the temperture hit the mid thirties for a couple of days but that was it for our winter,so I'm a little late getting started.  We decided that a 4x4x16 bed would work this year and we can always add on as we go.  I'm really excited because our growing season is so long and I can't wait to try a fall vegetable garden as well this year.

We started with 6-1x6x8 which we cut in half (we being my hubby),
2-1x2x8  which he cut into quarters  He screwed it all together  using outdoor deck grade screws  2" long and we finished it with landscaping fabric that we attached with #6 1/2" wood screws.

Bella checking to make sure
 we're doing it right

ground view

aerial view from the front deck

We chose our front yard because it has the best light and the most protection from our gulf winds.  We stay very breezy where live!







So now that the bed is done it's time for the dirt and the plants, so off we went to our neighborhood garden center.

Unfortunately, they didn't have the soil that we wanted , so off to another garden center and hoping we have better luck.




We didn't get exactly what we wanted but we were able to make do with what we could find so we loaded up and back home we went!






My husband did all the heavy work  we used a landscaping mix, a organic garden mix and a compost mix.




We had bought 10 cubic feet thinking that would be enough, but as you can see it's not.  So, back to the store tomorrow.