This and that...

Red potatoes from my first ever planting!

Been a while since I posted anything... I am still here and actively working to better my gardening skills.

Started a new garden back in March, of which my success has been minimal. I managed to get a good amount of red potatoes (my first time planting them). And my tomatoes seem to be doing good. Everything else I have planted is not as I had hoped. I am thinking my seed is too old, or gone bad, as hardly anything germinated. I do have a couple watermelon and squash plants that came up after I had given up on them. There are bugs eating my cow pea and corn seeds, though I did find one pea plant poking thru this morning.

I could also attribute it to lack of water. With the terrible dirt we have here, the water just runs off as you water, thus putting more water in the paths between the rows than on the plants. A bought a soaker hose, but at 50 feet long, it is difficult at best to use in my short-rowed garden.

I do have one rogue tomato plant growing in the garden, apparently from the compost pile. It looks like roma tomatoes, and they are growing on the vine much like cherry tomatoes do—several fruit on one branch. And the plant is huge. And I haven't really done anything to it except water it.

And on that note, it amazes me that you can spend all this time preparing a garden, meticulously plant your seeds/seedlings, water them with love... and get nothing! In addition to the "roma", I have 2 sunflowers that just popped up—one in the garden, and one where an old compost pile sat. Still scratching my head on this. Perhaps I just need to randomly scatter my seeds in the garden, cover'em with some leaves, and see what happens.

I am kidding of course, but it does zap some of the motivation out of one!

After watching the Back to Eden film, I have put some requests out for wood chips, but no luck yet. May have to "bite the bullet" and pay for  a load from the company near my home. But at $125 per load, that is a bit steep for my budget (and the wife won't be too happy either)!

Anyway, that is the news for now. Will keep the updates more frequent in the future.

Pray for rain! : )