Cotyledon noun Botany . 1. the primary or rudimentary leaf of the embryo of seed plants. It’s always amazing that these first leaves keep on dividing and turn into plants that give us wonderful food. Some of these seedlings are radishes, lettuce, kale, and beets. Getting down on the ground to inspect the tiny starts is the best way to check them out. Of course making a macro photo of it helps, too. I’ll keep you posted on their progression.

Cucumbers are coming in by the handful every other day or so. I’m in love with them. They have probably upped themselves in ranking as favorite thing to grow to #2 on my list. Tomatoes are still first. The golden zucchini are showing some weird genetic patterns. We’ve got a bunch of green aphids on our cukes and I think assassin bugs. Hoping we can just ignore them and they won’t make too big of a mess of things. A photo from 2008 in Florida—our tomatoes. Miss them! I’m going to miss checking the garden out while I’m away but I’ll have Chris upload photos for me to share.

‘Kohleria Bristols Possibly Bronze’ ‘Alsobia dianthiflora’ ‘Rob’s Boolaroo’ ‘Chirita Silver Surfer’ We had this bookcase from my mom which her dad had built. It’d been sitting in the garage holding other things and mom said we could take it for extra shelving. It now holds what books we have and Chris’ little collection of violets and violet allies. It’s cozy little corner and we always leave the blinds open to let some dim light in. Below, Samson will lay in his cat bed in the dim light of the window on the other wall.

Lots of things going on at our community garden. New beds and need seedlings, plus what has been established over the last few weeks are starting to take off. Love seeing a full garden! The garden is next to a horse arena so on the weekends it isn’t uncommon to have rodeo competitions going on. The pee-wee kids are the cutest! Little tykes my niece’s age and a little older riding their horses around barrels! Super cute! (need a few more !!! ?) Chris engineered this cucumber tunnel with tomato cages. The cukes are climbing like crazy right now and little fruits are starting to appear. See, aren’t they cute?…

A week or so ago we went home to gather the majority of the last items lingering at our parent’s houses. Chris and I popped in my mom and brother’s community garden to see how things were going and growing. This garden is very different from the one we are participating in at our new location mostly because there are actually full beds and members that are active in growing things. At the garden we are at, other than a school group we are the only private beds. Chris has been planting in the other empty beds in order to fill the garden up, harvest extra things and to share…

The garden is coming into full swing. Soon we will be harvesting daily or at least every other day and putting food away for the winter. I’m very excited about this! The golden zucchini was half this size on Saturday evening. We had about 20 minutes to run by our plot and water and check on things after four days doing field work and before heading to DFW for the weekend. We opted not to pick the squash because how could it have gotten much larger? Apparently it could have gotten much larger! It’s ginormous! I love the flower bud still attached to the cucumber in this photo. I tried…

Chris spends most mornings at the plot watering and doing random chores. Right now we’re waiting on compost before starting more seeds in other beds. Here’s a snapshot of what’s going on: Watermelon’s from a school’s plot. We took one of them but it was not quite ripe and very seedy. Chris hand pollinated a few watermelon flowers to see if he could get a few more out of the season. Brussels sprout seedlings…I think Chris said Long Island Improved is the variety. Sweet potato vine flower Remember it a few weeks ago? Sumter cucumbers. More cukes The corn and zucchini bed Little zucchini flowers!! I went around doing random…

Chris didn’t waste time finding the community garden where we could get some plots. The garden itself is different than the one my mom and brother have at the Common Grounds garden, a bit differently run and definitely less activity from individuals. In fact, we were able to score two plots for ourselves and then Chris is working on four other empty plots since no one else is managing them. The extra food grown will go to the food bank next to the plot. Another difference is that we barely see anyone else tending their crops other than a few people, and even those people will water everyone else’s plots,…

Our new place doesn’t really offer us any place to grow anything, though our landlord, who lives next door, offered to till up some space for us. Since we are only hoping to stay six months before finding a place to buy we didn’t want to mess up his yard for that short period of time. So, Chris did some research and found the local community garden, Helping Hands. We are set up with two of our own personal plots and will be taking care of three additional plots until someone else gets those. In addition to growing our own vegetables and fruits, leftovers and extras will go to the…

Chris planted pumpkins seeds at my mom and dad’s house before we moved. Here’s a bit of the chronology of the first few weeks. We’re guessing they will be ready around Thanksgiving. I’ve never had luck with pumpkins in Florida, bugs got to them fast and even if they lived long enough to bloom, nothing was pollinated. I’m interested to see what kind of luck with have with these. Casper and Big Max were the seeds of choice. Anyone had luck with pumpkins? I’m interested in organic methods, too. Please share!