Vegetables

Each year we plant some vegetables in the garden.
Usually tomatoes, courgette, pepper and lettuce.
This year we managed potatoes, garlic, tomatoes, pepper and courgettes.
Due to rearranging and flattening the garden then out normal veggie patch has had to be moved, so all the vegetables are growing in mishap places around the garden.
Although the courgette seems to be loving its new position.

Here it is after having been growing for about 2 weeks

Dec 4th

Dec 4th

2 weeks later this is what it looks like...

Dec 18th

Can you spot the courgettes? There are 4 of them, they all have flowers on the end of them.

We have had so many courgette off this plant so far that I have had to take some to Judo to give away, cause we just can't keep up! It obviously loves its new position and has found some growth hormones from somewhere.
You only have to look at it to see it growing! Some of them are doubling in size in 2 days, you see one growing , think ok will pick it in a day or 2 cause it is just not quite big enough, you go back 36 hours later and suddenly you have a marrow instead of a courgette!
Man you have to be quick around here to get nice size ones!

This also means I have managed to achieve another of the challenges I set myself last year. Even though I didn't manage to achieve all the challenges throughout the year, I am still going to work away at them and slowly complete them.
So this post shows I have managed Challenge #43 - have a veggie patch and give something away from it.

But while we are on the sublect of Challenges, I did also complete #37 - pick some lavendar and place in your bathroom. I will take a picture for proof when I remember.
So 2 more completed.

Vegetable Time

Along with doing the sunflowers the other day, we also put in a whole heap of vegetables.
Steve likes to grow tomatoes, he is the only one in the house who eats them raw but he enjoys growing them.



Tomato plants



We have always thought about growing some corn as well, so we put in a very small amount to see what it will do.



Althought we have noticed already in the first week that it is growing very quickly!



Last year we grew courgette for the first time and it was fun, so have put in 2 different types this time. 1 green and 1 yellow.

Yellow sunshine Corgette

Green courgette

  Although we were not quick enough at getting the snail bait out the first evening and we lost one of the courgette plants overnight! We replaced it this weekend and added heaps of bait!!
Which meant that yesterday morning when I checked we had 17 dead snails around the veggies!

 Steve has decided that this year he is going to grow eggplant and peppers. Never grown them before so we will see how they turn out.



The pepper growing strongly



The start of the eggplants



Will keep you up to date occassionally as to how our plants are growing.

Courgettes

I use courgettes in a lot of cooking, I like them.
So when at the garden centre last year I noticed a courgette plant and decided that we could try growing some.
No one told me how easy it would be and how fast they grow!

From this....

To this.....

To this.....

to this.....

To OMG this.....

The very large one grew so fast I forgot to go and check them and it almost turned into a marrow!

Growing Your Own

Last year we successfully grew a few tomatoes. Not enough to really do anything major with towards our grocery shopping, but enough for Steve to create some Italian Tomato Sauce with that I used in 3 lots of Spag Bog.

This year we have once again grown tomatoes over the summer, along with spinach, lettuce, carrots and courgettes.
The boys have enjoyed watching things grow at super fast speed and also had fun being able to collect lettuce from the garden in the morning for daddy's salad that he takes to work each day.

lettuce and spinach

Courgettes

tomatoes (covered in tomato dust)

finally going red, although they really are taking a long time!

Maybe next year we will venture and try something else, like corn

Carrot

Back in January we successfully pulled down the plum tree in the garden.

In it's place we put a small vegetable garden. We didn't put in anything special this year, we were more interested to see if we could actually grow anything, plus we had a feeling we wouldn't be here.

We have tried to keep Ben interested in this at times, and he actually enjoyed helping daddy plant all the seeds.

So it was wonderful yesterday morning when he came running to find me with a baby carrot that they had just harvested.

Think this is probably the only thing we will get out of the little garden, not sure if anything else has actually grown, but hey 1 carrot is good.