The First Flower Sighting!

I realize that I haven’t been very exciting this week as far as blogposts go.  It’s been more exciting in real life, which is probably why I haven’t had a lot of time to do anything worthy of posting.  I’m going to continue that trend today - but I promise after the weekend I should have lots of fun things to share!

I woke up this morning and saw that one of our cucumber plants has it’s first flower!  So pretty!  (Upon looking at the flower a little longer in this picture though, I began to realize that it looks a little bit like a starfish…. I’m not really sure what that means - but I like starfish, so it can’t be bad, right?)  This means cucumbers will start growing soon… yum!

In other astounding garden news, the lemon basil has really taken off!  I’ll probably have to start using some of it soon (darn!).

Garden Update

I thought I’d give the crochet a break for a day and share a few picture of my container garden instead.  Things seem to be growing pretty nicely - the cucumbers keep shooting up!

We should also be eating some lettuce pretty soon, within two weeks I would think.  I can’t wait to be able to come home after work and just eat from my garden.  Yum!

I’m also waiting pretty impatiently for the basil and the green onions, both of which are doing well.  I just love these foods so much that the growing process can seem soooooo slow!

The Garden - It Grows!

Just a little update on my balcony garden. Apparently when you put young cucumber plants into 40 mph gusts of wind, the cucumbers do not win. So, I had to start over with the cucumbers, but this batch is doing much better! I have two pots, but only one is doing really well. Soon I’ll thin these out and put a couple of the good ones into the other pot. I love how once they start going, there is nothing stopping them!

Also going very well is the leaf lettuce. I think that this may be my favorite to grow, mostly because I can have a little fresh lettuce at every meal, and I don’t have to worry about finishing up a head of lettuce before it goes bad. Also, if cut right it will grow a second crop pretty quickly. It’s so easy to eat healthy when all the food is growing right outside your door!

The basil and lemon basil are starting to come in now as well. They are just starting to get their second leaves, soon they will probably shoot up as well. I can’t wait for pesto, yum!

One of my other favorite summer garden treats are green onions. I love them in just about everything, I’ll even eat them plain, dipped in a little salt. This was often how we ate them at dinner growing up, when grandpa gave us the surplus from his garden, so it reminds me of home!

Hopefully it will only be a few more weeks before things start becoming ready to eat - I’m sure you’ll see more before then!

Cucumber Sproutlets

The cucumbers have sprouted! Aren’t they adorable? They grow really fast - some days about 3cm in 12 hours! Once they get their first “real” leaves, I’ll put them in the big pots outside.

I also planted the other seeds outside - some lettuce, basil, lemon basil and green onions. Hopefully they will sprout soon!

Playing With Dirt

It doesn’t look like much right now, does it? Soon it will be twelve tiny cucumber sproutlets. In about two months they should be yielding delicious ripe cucumbers, which are my favorite thing about summer! Watching cucumber plants grow is absolutely amazing, they climb so fast and attach themselves to things so strongly - sometimes I get a little worried that they might try to take over the planet!

Also in the planting queue for the balcony: basil, lemon basil, leaf lettuce and green onions. Yum!