Ready, Set, Fruit!

Picture Update on Fruiting Plants...

Our first quarter sized patty-pan squash. There are several beautiful squash blossoms on this plant but the patty-pan's haven't developed as quickly. The plant is about a foot wide and 2 feet tall.

The infamous Tomato-berry plant. It took weeks to grown a centimeter then it shot up a foot and stayed that height for another week and produced maybe one tomato. Now its about 3 feet tall and 2 feet wide with at least 30 tomato-berries. The name describes the shape and size of this type of tomato, strawberry like.

Our first cucumber. One of many. The biggest of all. It is about 4 inches long and an inch wide. It's been growing in a container for about a month and a week. 

Super Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes. They are starting to ripen in this picture. The plant is about 4 feet tall and 3 feet wide with an unknown number of marble sized fruit.

Super 45 Hybrid cantaloupe plant in 10x12 container with a trellis. Picture are the first and 2nd melons growing. The closest is the size of a plum and the second is the size of a kiwi. There are at least 4 other flowers with tiny pea sized and yellow globes starting to form. 

Container cantaloupe plant with 2 sizable melons and several other tiny ones. I made a tepee with a more solid trellis to hold the first and provide more space for the plants growth. Several references said that if given vertical space cantaloupes only needed one square foot (otherwise they needed 4x4 sqft of ground space). So I'm hoping this will be enough trellis space to grow full size melons.

A Pregnant Girls Dream

Pickles and Watermelons...

I went out to check on things just briefly because it threatened to be a bad stormy day. I picked a few strawberries. Tried putting up some more fencing and noticed that in "container drive" things were finally starting to set fruit. The pickles and watermelons are finally coming in. The watermelons are much further behind but you can see those little striped rounds starting to form. It's pretty amazing. I didn't know if either would set any fruit at all. 

So excited! 

The little fuzzy striped ball is the first stage of fruit growth for the bush sugar baby. 

A baby that I found, fallen off. See the stripes? 

A bush cucumber, the first one. The one that looks the most like a cuc but I think it looks like a pickle more.

Second cucumber a little further behind and a little weirder looking. 

Birthday Backdate

Birthday...

 Since I didn't do much gardening today except for watering I am going to write a little bit about my birthday because it was a garden birthday and I didn't get to write about.

Considering, that gardening is my thing on April 18th I spent the very warm afternoon planting tomatoes, lemon balm, and basil. I then showered and got ready for dinner with my family and boyfriend. At dinner I spoke of my garden, my hopes for it and then we did presents. My mom gave me a beautiful garden tool set by Threshold and a matching pair of women's gardening gloves. The ones made of canvas and suede, heavy duty. I like them so much but I know I won't do any planting in them for fear of getting them to the point where they are no longer recognizable. I was going to return them because I knew I would not use them because I liked them so much but I thought again and decided to keep them. I looked around online on how to clean them but found very little. I know garden gloves aren't meant to stay beautifully, perfectly, and purely clean but I also believe that they wouldn't make them in canvas and suede in beautiful patterns if they couldn't maintain some of there glory. So how do you clean these types of gloves? Or are they meant just for heavy duty work, like, weeding, wheeling the wheelbarrow and shoveling ?

Boyfriend...

Once dinner and all of that was done Mike and I came home and opened the presents he'd gotten me. He got me 2 sun hat, I requested, a few unrelated items, and a pair of comfortable headphones, the newest out from Apple, and the MOST comfortable amazing headphones/mic I've ever had. I have a hard time using headphones because my ears are sensitive and he knew I'd want to listen to music as I worked in the garden... great gifts all around. He also knew that I'd have trouble wearing an expensive hat out, at first, so he got me one cheap but very cute one and one more expensive one. That way I can easy in to the nicer one. 

Imagined...

When I imagined up Patch I also imagined what I would look like in Patch. I would have a sun hat on or around my neck, matching gloves, tools, and knee pad. I'd be wearing old shorts and a tank top and just be very smiley and peaceful. All the stuff I got on my birthday made that image come true. I don't have the caddy yet but I just found a matching one. Overall really good HAUL and birthday!

Tomorrow...

I'll finish building the tepee trellises, weed, and amend. I'll post a video on how to build the trellises and some images of the finished product in place!

Tool set!

Caddy I'll soon get!

Cheaper (L) and Pricier (R), love them both. I have a neon shirt to match the cheaper one.

Gloves to match my tool set and soon caddy. Love the pattern!