Garden Progress

Aside from working behind the shed, as I mentioned earlier, we've gotten some other work done in the garden.

I finally planted the hibiscus that I got on clearance for $5.


This is monumental, because it is the first thing that I have planted in my garden, and it is one of the only things that I have ever planted in my life.

Woodrow also helped me by pruning the dead debris from the banana trees and the freeze-damaged chenille plant.


We got most of the raised garden bed cleared out.


Just as a reminder, this is what it looked like when I moved in.


I also split the cauliflower between two pots.


It's probably still way too many cauliflower in a pot, but I will probably transplant some into the garden bed once it's ready.

My mangoes are still growing.


To give some perspective, this was the same mango a week before.


My sweet yellow pepper has bloomed.


It appears that my eggplant is about to bloom.


My tomatoes are beginning to turn red.


The lemon still has tons of beautiful blooms waiting to open, and lots of fruit ripening.


The blackberry bush still has fruit growing and ripening.




So the gardening goes on...

Blackberries

Tonight I harvested some more ripe blackberries from the new bush. I got 6 little berries off of it. I added them to some store-bought blackberries and vanilla yogurt for a healthy dessert. Can you tell the difference between my blackberries and the store-bought ones?

These are the store-bought berries...


...and these are mine.


Talk about David and Goliath.

Blackberries

Last night I picked the 8 fresh blackberries off of the blackberry bush that I bought last weekend.


Oh they were good!

Please, please, please don't let me kill this bush! I want more blackberries!

My New Babies

Well I was finally able to attend the annual Caloosa Rare Fruit Tree sale that I've been looking forward to for months. There were lots of trees there to choose from, with the largest selection being from ECHO. I bought a Passion Flower from them. Below are my new plant additions:

Passion Flower:


Meyer Lemon, which is already laden with small fruits and a lovely bloom:






Black Raspberry (I forget the type, but it is a tropical version that doesn't need cold weather like others). It came with some raspberries already on it, and some blooms:






Guava:


Aloe:


Datil Pepper:


Lemon Thyme, Clover and Rosemary:



Grand Total: $104


This had to be "meant to be". I pulled out my cash, was short, asked Woodrow if he had any cash, and he had $11. I added that to my cash, and was still a few bucks short. Then I found a few more dollars, counted it up, and it was $104 even. It was destiny!

So now I have to figure out what to plant where, and what to leave in pots.

Some other things that happened today:

I've been watching these "weeds" that have been growing under my ficus for a couple of weeks now, wondering exactly what they were. I was amazed at how quickly they grew. Well today I think that I figured out what they are. Sunflower volunteers!




The bird feeder is right above here, and it looks like perhaps the birds missed a couple of seeds. I'm excited to have sunflowers growing!

My tomatoes still look good:


The bougainvillea that I was loving is no longer booming with blooms, but now the one by the shed is.


I've been noticing some webbing on some of my mango leaves, and some of the leaves are chewed up. So when I went to the fruit tree sale today, I took a couple of leaves in a bag. I gave it to a girl that works at ECHO and asked her if she knew what it was. Just as I was handing it to her, I spotted a large spider running through the bag.


"Whoa!", I said, "There's a big spider in there." "Yeah,that's probably what's making the webs on the leaves. That's actually a good thing!"

Yeah. Right. I know that spiders are very useful in the garden, and I love to have them do their thing in secrecy and out-of-sight. However, having arachnophobia, I do NOT want to see them running through a bag I'm holding and knowing that they were on a leaf that I cut from my tree!

When we got home, we let the spider go out by the mango tree.


We hope that he kills many nasty bugs for us.

So it was a really nice day. I finally got some of the trees that I've been wanting, I discovered that I have sunflowers growing, and I learned that I don't have a bad infestation of caterpillars or something on my mango, but just a camouflaged spider that will keep me on my toes now whenever I'm around the mango!