Gardens Are Not Vegetarian

First off, I did get a whole lot more time with the plants this week, which is great because they are getting so big. It's like a sped up version of raising children, except you eat them at the end. And speaking of eating them, check out the first head of lettuce I got!

While I have some pretty wonderful pictures on the progress my little plants are making, I do have to lament the loss of one of my 6 zucchini plants. I think it got flattened in a storm, I came home and it was completely snapped off at the base of the stem. Then again, at then end of the day this is probably a good thing because each plant apparently can yield between 60 and 100 squash. I still have no idea what I might do with 300 zucchini but some of you lucky folks might be seeing it at your dinner table.

Now to the title of today's post. To make my plants strong and lovely and maximize fruit bearing, I have been fertilizing them and reading about the different organic fertilizers and pest repellents available. In all this research I found it some what ironic that often the best "organic" fertilizers are made from animal by products. Bone meal is good for roses, and blood meal is good for tomatoes, and then in my own garden I've been using something that was explained to me as ground up fish and seaweed (yum vegetables!). Now, I'm sure corporate farmers have more options than these, like manure and compost, but I still thought it was somewhat odd and maybe a good warning to my organic loving vegetarian friends. All that said, look what the fish guts have done for my plants! The zucchini leaves are the size of dinner plates and my tomatoes are two feet tall!

Now onto the project this week, I have now made 2 attempts to grow more veggies from seed. I keep getting to small seedlings then they die. So this week I invested in a seed starting green house. It was amazing to see the little seedlings sprout up practically overnight. I hope my investment keeps them all from dying off after a week of life. I also must say, it really is amazing to me every time I plant a seed and then look at my strong healthy plants and realize they came from such tiny little starts. Pretty awesome how much potential is in such an itty bitty package.

Finally, the plants I did manage to grow from seed. Basically, I did this randomly and just dumped 4 packages of seed into freshly tilled dirt. Look at all those little plants coming up. Soon they will be flowers and the bed is going to be incredible. Unless the heat gets them first, in which case next year I'm buying bushes.