A weekend of gardening

I was debating what to write about this week. Of course there have been many things going on lately, but I think I'll spend tonight and talk about my new garden(s). Why gardens? Well because there are two, one in Houston and a, now smaller, one in Austin. No, it's not smaller because I killed some of the plants, but only because the garden in Houston is now planted and is bigger. First though, my garden.

My jalapeno plant is growing great! When I planted this in March, I wasn't sure how it would do. But now, 2 months later, I have 3 medium size peppers and 1 baby pepper growing. Within 1 week they almost doubled in size, and I can't wait to see how they look after next weekend. I'm so excited to use them in something tasty! I also have basil, parsley, and chives which are all doing quite well.

As for the Houston garden, that got started this past weekend. I finally convinced Jeremy that it was time to do something with the back patio and landscaping. For the past two weeks we've been collecting plants and pots for the patio, and of course the awesome monkey, so that was looking good, but the back landscaping needed work. This weekend we spent Saturday morning digging up all the old mulch (there was a lot of it) and tilling the soil to get ready for the plants. We also took a trip to Maas Nursery and found tons of great plants.

Since it was so late in the planting season, we picked up a large tomato plant. Because it was already quite large, that meant it was pretty developed and would survive the hot temperatures and the transplanting better than a small plant would. Plus it already had a bunch of tomatoes on it, so it would be a little easier to keep alive. We also picked up some green pepper plants, about 5 other different types of peppers, eggplant, squash, and tons of herbs - basil, rosemary, thyme, mint, oregano, parsley, chives. I also grabbed some seed packets and decided to try my hand at those. Some directly in the soil (beans) and the others started in little pots in the kitchen. We also picked up a jasmine plant, mmm they smell so good.

So it took 2 days worth of work, but the garden is finished. Okay, well maybe not "finished," the brick work still has to be put in, but the plants are in, and are even on an automated watering schedule! Yep, after putting in the plants, we put down a soaker hose, and snaked it through all the plants. We're hoping that it will work out well. We also tried to go fully organic, so we used organic soil and organic compost. You can see on the pictures below where the soaker hose went, as we need to get a bit more compost to finish out the top soil. I think it looks great and really makes the back yard look good. Plus, with luck, we'll lots of fresh produce for the next few months (at least).