Where have we been?

It's summer and we've been busy. Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. We've been so busy that we've done a ton of eating out and quick meals. I feel sickly and I've gained a few lbs. Ugh. Well we just need to get back on the wagon. But I will post some pictures of the garden. Up to date and everything.

I don't have enough structure for my tomatoes, so they fell yesterday.

 Lots of tomatoes

 Herbs are doing good, I think.

 Cucumbers are taking over

 Green peppers are finally starting to grow.

Peanut tree, cucumbers, strawberries

And if you want to know what we've really been doing...

Working on trying out every splash pad in Houston! :)
Park-a-looza 2012

Paints and Plants

So I know I haven't blogged in awhile, But in my defense, I do have two toddlers to keep up with. But most importantly, the weather has been amazing and it would be a crime to spend a large amount of time inside. However, I woke up early today, so I figured now is a good time to get back on here.I did post some pictures of our outside adventures (Eisenhower Park, Duessen Park, the zoo!) Later I'll post a recipe for some button biscuits that my little ones love to snack on or have with honey for breakfast. But for now I'm just going to give you all an update on the Blackheart Garden.

These pictures are from last week. The sun hasn't surfaced as of yet, so I'm unable to get hot off the presses pictures. But you can see, we're making progress.

That's a Roma Tomato. They're about the size of a racket ball and the very first one starting turning red yesterday.

Questions to all you gardeners out there: I hear birds and caterpillars will come to eat my tomatoes. I haven't seen any signs of this happening? Am I just lucky?

Ok, the strawberries were doing amazing, and I think we were about a week off before being able to harvest our first few strawberries. However, Rose got excited and picked out six biggest strawberries, so it might be a little longer.

Remember these pictures were from last week.

The green beans are doing well. But they are producing many beans. Weird.

My green peppers are flowering but not much else, and my cucumber is trying to dominate the rest of the garden. Very annoying. All the herbs are doing well, and I'm excited about what to next in the front garden.

Being Overboard: Updated April 6, 2012

April 6, 2012: New pictures of the garden below

Last week I was pretty upset about our garden. It was not looking good. The leaves were all turning yellow or brown on all the herbs except the rosemary plants. The tomatoes looked like they weren't going to make it, and my onions all but died.

I took pictures but apparently they don't want to upload.

But we took a weekend trip to Dripping Springs and played in the flowers. Maybe just maybe Mother Earth smiled on us, because the garden is coming back!!!

Most of the onions are still not doing great, but the garlic is making up for it. The tomatoes are peaking out and one is very large. All of the herbs have come back. The strawberries out front are not doing as well as I expected but maybe they're not getting enough sun. Hmmm. Our neighbors may hate us right now, because we look like a mini farm, but they'll love us if we give them some of our produce.

Original Picture March 17, 2012 Happy St. Patty's day

Friday March 23, 2012

Today, March 31, 2012.




Hopefully things will continue to do well!!! :)

New Pictures:
April 5, 2012

Wow! You can really see how much it's grown just in the past week.

Some other pics, just for fun.

 Strawberries

 Green beans starting to form

 Green Peppers

 Cucumbers

 All the herbs

 Garlic

 Cherry Tomatoes

Roma Tomatoes

Yeah! I didn't kill everything!
Happy Earth Day! Turn some lights off and go enjoy outside!

Being Overboard

We have still been baking and cooking. We made fettucini alfredo with the pasta we had dried, on Monday. Later last week, we made some pretty awesome meals out of Jamie Oliver's "Meals in Minutes" Cookbook. We tried a baked chicken with creamed spinach and potatoes that went over really well with the whole family. And we had cod with sweet potatoes, a broccoli and asparagus mix and home made berry frozen yogurt. Yum! Then we had leftovers. I have been trying to drink tea instead of DrPepper, but DrPepper is so good. Damn you DrPepper.

Getting back on track, I was talking to a friend of mine who's husband juices (as in juices with fruits and veggies.) She has bought organic produce for years. Made her own baby food. Really I'm jealous that she cares so much. I don't really believe that grocery stores are telling the truth when labeling organic. Maybe I'm just a cynic. Sometimes I feel like they just put food that looks organic (IE. smaller and looks like it's about to go bad.) and place it in the organic pile while no one is looking. I'm sure I'm wrong.

Anyhow, one thing you will notice is that organic food is expensive. Well more expensive than non-organic food. Herbs are also very expensive and normally we don't use all that we buy. So we thought, we just grow it. It will be so much more economical. I'm not so sure that's true, but I'm trying to convince myself that I will make my money back. And more importantly SAVE some money along the way.  So we're trying to grow a garden. We've been successful with radishes and sweet peas in our front yard flower bed. We did grow some carrots but they tasted like cigarette butts. Yuck.

So here's our plan. It changed after we went to the store, but we realized it's too late to grow cauliflower and broccoli until fall here in Houston. We also forgot to buy parsley during our many trip to Lowes and Home Depot yesterday.


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Roma	Roma		Garlic	Rose	Sage	Mint	Dill	Cucumbers	Cucumbers	Yellow Onion	Red Onion
			Garlic	Rose	Sage	Mint	Dill	Gr Pepp	Green beans	Yellow Onion	Red Onion
Cherry	Cherry	Cherry	Cherry	Rose	Cilantro	Cilantro	Cilantro	Gr Pepp	Green beans	Yellow Onion	Red Onion
Cherry	Cherry	Cherry	Cherry	Basil	Basil	Thyme	Thyme	Gr Pepp	Green beans	Yellow Onion	Red Onion

Home Depot was having a sale on the boxes for $30 a piece. The plants were kind of expensive but it would of been a lot cheaper if we had done it from seed. We choose not to go completely over the top this time, and we went the route of transplants. Just putting the boxes in, filling in the dirt and planting the herbs and veggies was a lot of work for two people in two day. But here's a picture of our end product. We're really new to all this so I will try to give updates and link them to this post. I'll let you know if we kill everything, or if things turn out fine.

Please wish us luck. I think I might cry if we kill all these beautiful plants. Now, if we only had a deck.