I went to the lovely community garden today to check on our plots, where I haven't been able to invest nearly the time and energy I would like.  But I was able to pick some beautiful, deep orange sun sugar tomatoes and pull up one square foot batch of garlic.  I planted a lot of garlic this year.  I love the stuff.  The garlic in my container garden stayed pretty small, but the garlic in our raised beds did pretty well... at least in comparison.  :) 

Our community garden is seriously awesome.  It even has chickens now!  Which means I can't stop at the garden anymore with the kiddos unless I'm ready to spend at least 5 minutes in the chicken coop.

Check out this sunflower.  It's 12 feet tall or I'm smurf.  I've heard that sunflowers draw up toxins from the soil, besides just providing yummy seeds.  But nothing is more impressive to me than the insane heights they reach. 

And here's the sad reality that is my watermelon vine... it had some blossoms last week, but I'm not holding out much hope at this point for fruit.  I just haven't been able to keep up with watering it.  I weeded last week with a vengeance, but they're all creeping back.  I'm wondering if it's too late to put down some newspaper and mulch...  my efforts at the community garden this year are rocky combination of honest, rookie effort and over-extended-mommy-doing-the-bare-minimum-to-grow-something.  Which means I probably won't make it over there with newspaper.  Or harvest a melon this year.  Did I mention that it was 110 degrees today?

Speaking of which, I'm going to try growing melons in the areas of my backyard where I had deemed the hours of sun inadequate.  In north Texas heat, a little shade (and backyard access for consistent watering's sake) might be just what the doctor ordered.

Poor little plant...

Ripening

Watching my tomatoes and peppers turn colors has been enthralling.... it's miraculous in a way.  The next time I need a miracle, maybe I'll just walk around a farm.  This is the first day I saw my brandywine tomato start to turn.  I can hardly wait to eat it.

Follow the Instructions

This is good advice actually.  How often do you hear people talking about how great it was when they DIDN'T follow instructions.  Let's be honest, usually it's the opposite, which is why spouses tell stories for years on each other for how catastrophically wrong things once went as a result of NOT following (or even) reading instructions.

Which is what I did (or didn't do...?) with our live beneficial nematode treatment and ladybugs.  Sigh.  To be fair, the ladybugs that I ordered on Amazon didn't even come with instructions.  So I should have looked some up!  As should anyone who wants live insect organic treatments for their gardens to actually set up shop and work.

Release them AFTER watering in the early morning or late at night.  And DON'T release them in the heat of the day.  I think those are the highlights.  Oh, and 10 or 11 am is NOT early morning.  Having a 2 month old baby who is actually letting you sleep in, is the best excuse I've ever had for not following these instructions... but I wasted about $60 total.  That's some expensive sleep time. 

 

I bought my nematodes at a fantastic local shop in Fort Worth called Elisabeth Anna's Old World Garden, who gave me great instructions, which I followed very poorly.  Wherever you get your nematodes, the instructions are the same.  Live beneficial insects are supposed to be an amazing help to organic gardening... hopefully, I'll be able to speak from experience on this next time I give them a whirl.  In the meantime, I'm an growing expert on what NOT to do.