OK, this is my first garden ever and I am so excited that I have to share this with you. We had vegetable gardens when I was a kid-lots of times. The best meals were those with fresh vegetables from the garden. Cantelope, black eyed peas, tomatos, fried squash and fried okra (burned just a little on the edges like I liked it). My mom was always canning peas, beans, cucumbers (oh the bread and butter pickles were out of this world). So finally, after all these years of missing out on all that home grown produce, I decided I wanted to try my hand at a little gardening.
When I say "little" that is what I mean. I knew I did not have time for a big vegetable garden since I work full time and have a 45 minute drive to and from work. I also knew that our soil in the back yard is horrible. We have had such dry spells the past few years. Our back yard is not much more than a cliche pit. So, my solution was to have a little container garden. I have never had my very own garden. So I started small.
I started with some tomatoes, banana peppers, cilantro and jalapeno peppers. I started them in the house from seed and after the freeze scare, I moved them out to the barrels I had purchased for the "containers".
The poor things have been beaten to death by rain, hail, and wind. We have had more rain this year than we have probably had collectively for the past few years. We also had a terrible cold spell right after I set them out and they looked as if they would die. But after a little warmth inside and some water and some sun...they started perking up. I imagine this is probably boring to some but you have to understand how elated I am to have actually grown something we can eat. We were actually able to harvest some of the cilantro yesterday to add to our fajitas. UMMM...they are so full of flavor. I bet I have told 20 people today that we used our own "home grown from scratch" cilantro this weekend. Here is a pic.
I noticed the first blooms on my tomatoes and peppers today. I could not help but take a picture. I promised Rhea (my sweet sister) I would share these pics with her since she can't be here. So, here they are; my grown from scratch tomatoes, peppers and cilantro. Lesley's First Garden.
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