It's Not Easy Being Green

 [Day 23: Garden View]

As you recall (or perhaps not, here's a friendly reminder), Amy and I are tending a raised bed garden in a former vacant lot. It's been almost a month now, but I am happy to report that not only did we not kill off everything, we actually have ate things from it (and didn't get food poisoning)! Below is a summary of the growings on (ha - bad pun!), mostly in pictures of course.

[Day 28: The lettuce is our best growing veggie thus far]

[Day 28: The first of what promised to be a ton of cucumber vines]

[Day 31: Things starting to get quite large. We put hay in the potato baskets - it's supposed to help them grow. Or something]

[Day 35: I goofily display our first tomato]

[Day 38: Amy displays our second ripe tomato]

[Day 38: Said tomato with our first lettuce harvest in the veggie bag Amy made (she's crafty)...]

[...Which turned into a nummy salad that evening for dinner]

[Day 42: None of the rest of our tomatoes have ripened yet - this one is huge. It's probably close to a pound by now]

[Day 42: Our first casualty - we had to pull this squash as the stems broke. Actually nothing really has been happening in terms of veggie growth with our squash/zucchini. I wonder if we got duds.]

[Day 45: I call these our alien tomatoes. They're heirlooms, but I'm curious to see how they look when they're ripe.]

[Day 45: It's insane how big everything has gotten in six weeks. We put in a trellis for the cucumbers as the vines were grabbing everything in sight]

Below are the pictures I took today (Day 49). And yes, I used my iPhone /geek

[Look at the little cucumber! Those bumps are mighty prickly]

[Lettuce, shortly before we harvested some for the second time. We had another salad with tonight's dinner]

[Hot peppers - at least I think they're spicy *shrugs*]

[String beans - we should be able to harvest some this week]

[I really love this shot - Amy really stands out with her yellow shirt. You can really tell how much everyone's beds have grown - It's quite amazing to see over a hundred of them in various stages of growth.]

If you'd like to see more shots of the garden, check out Flickr. Overall I could not be more pleased with the way things have grown. I had doubts growing so many things from seed - I had no idea they could grow so fast. Now that things are sprouting, I will admit I am impatient - I want to eat things! I have no doubt by the end of August we're going to be swimming in veggies. Now if someone could teach us how to pickle them...