First Post of the 2018 Growing Season

This is my first post of the 2018 growing season.

A number of things have already been planted. Thus, I am a bit late in detailing all the events.

Today is the first time I watered all the young plants with Miracle-Gro fertilizer. In about a week I should do it again.

The recent warm spell has caused the many corn, bean, squash, white cucumber & okra seeds I planted to emerge as seedlings.

I must purchase soil in order to make use of the many empty containers in the yard. The string bean seeds I bought this year are ideal for container planting so I want to make full use of them.

At the moment I have about 16 salad plants that I purchased at Walmart and Lowe's. Some are ready to be picked. They were planted earlier in May. I would like to have a steady supply of lettuce in the garden this year in order to avoid buying them at grocery stores. They taste so much better from the yard!

I have yet to plant some more corn, zucchini, beans and perhaps some sweet peas. I am excited about what the garden will produce this year. Will try to have photos on a daily basis.

Transplanting Seedlings

Yesterday and today I transplanted seedlings I started indoors because it finally has gotten warm enough to do so and due to seedlings really shooting up tall. I don't know how to prevent them from sprouting out like this. I have had this problem in all the years I have tried starting seeds indoors.

Yesterday, I transplanted green beans, cucumbers and mini-pumpkin plants that I started indoors. I also transplanted some lettuce varieties I purchased from Lowe's. Today I transplanted zucchini seedlings and I put some protection around them to keep the cats and squirrels from damaging them. I also took the remaining lettuce plants I had and planted them in a huge container along with a cherry tomato plant in the center.

I planted corn indoors today along with some yellow organic string beans and a couple of small white gourd plants. I just love the gourd & squash type plants. Always have ever since I was a child.

First Zucchini Harvest

As I was looking through the huge tomato and zucchini leaves in the garden bed, I was totally surprised to see 2 huge zucchinis just waiting to be harvested. Here they are after I cut them from the bush:

All along I've been looking at the bush farther away that has been producing small yellow squash. Then all of a sudden these 2 that were all hidden underneath the green foliage and stems appear. 

The raspberry plant has been producing plenty of fruit. Nothing like fresh raspberries! Also kale and lettuce has been picked. Still waiting on the first ripe tomatoes and cucumbers/pickles to appear.

Overnight Outflow Winds

Not as warm today. Official high temp in the upper 70s with early evening cooling that required a long-sleeved shirt. Well, as promised, here are some photos of the urn-type vase I planted Gladiolus bulbs in:

Overnight there was outflow from strong to severe thunderstorms west of here. Received a warning from the weather service that 40 mph winds were on their way. Woke up to this:

The Forsythia flowers just blew off the bush. It's too bad because the flowers only last in spring and came rather late this year.

Planted additional kernels of corn and string beans today in addition to okra and peas. Okra has never done well in this garden, neither through seed nor through transplanting sprouted plants from the nurseries. Tomorrow I shall plant some zucchini and perhaps some decorative gourds/squash seeds. Always have had success with zucchini and sometimes with pie pumpkins and decorative fall squash varieties.

Finally, a few varieties of store-bought lettuce are growing nicely: