The bad and the good. . .

I had my very first gardening tragedy the other day!



Two of my tomato plants vanished, and a third laying on top of the soil instead of in it. This is what comes of putting them on a windowsill within the reach of cats. :(

Thanks to the comment by Karen Anne on my last post, I knew roots can grow out of the stem if I bury it, so I gave it a shot. . . And I think it worked! It's been a few days now, and my little trooper appears to be going strong!



And it's not like I have a shortage of tomatoes because I additionally planted some more seeds a few days ago - this time for larger tomatoes - and when I went to check on them this morning, they had sprung up!





I hope my garden will be big enough for all these tomatoes! We just went to Home Depot the other day to buy the wood to build it, and I'm going with a larger size than originally planned after my Dad said I needed more room for these guys! We'll see how it goes. . . I'm hoping to build the garden this weekend!

Transplanted!

I moved my little cherry tomato babies to their own containers! I have been totally petrified to do this, worrying I would kill them, and so I've been stalling. . . And it turned out to be a good thing because suddenly, two more plants popped up! So now I have eight.

I thought for sure when I went to transplant them they'd have long roots, all tangled around one another, but I was surprised to find they had only short roots and they pretty much fell apart in my hands. So I put some nice potting soil in each container, and then one plant per container (along with some of the soil they were in - trying not to shock them too much!) and watered them and talked to them. (Yes, I'm trying everything!)



I hope they will make it! I'm a little nervous because they seem very floppy. I did my best to support them with a bit of extra soil, and watered around and not on them. We'll see how it goes!



I also started some larger tomatoes today (I know, I am so late to be starting these, I'm sure!) and hope I'll have as much luck as I am with these cherry tomatoes (so far). I'm dying to start my peas but they say to start them directly in the garden, and as yet, my "garden" is still my window sill. I will resolve that by next weekend at the latest. If I can't figure out how to build my own, I know my local Home Depot has a raised garden kit (basically, the wood pre-cut!) that I could probably build by myself.

I'm really enjoying this gardening thing! There's something very rewarding about this "growing things" thing! ;)

Jenni starts a garden!

I have a friend who gardens and it got me interested, and I started saying stuff around the house like, "maybe I should try this!" The problem is, I don't historically have the best of luck with gardening!

So the Easter bunny brought me a very Jenni-size garden in my basket:



I planted them, not really thinking I'd have much luck since I never get seeds to grow, but much to my surprise. . .



I can already see my first gardening mistake, which was to plant all the seeds instead of the "2-3" they recommended. I figured, with my lack-of-success rate, I should plant them all and maybe I'd get one or two. What I ended up with are eight! The half dozen you see in the picture, plus two more that came up a bit later. Now I'm worried I won't be able to spread them out as they are too close together! I've got to tackle the transplanting tonight. . .

Meanwhile, inspired by my success, what was going to be "just a little joke of a garden" has turned into plans for an actual real garden!



Bigger tomatoes, peas, and proper soil to start them in! I also managed to find some of those planting pots that you can put right in the ground at a discount store, so I'm going to give those a go. My next challenge is going to be building a raised garden somewhere in my backyard to transfer these guys to!

I want to babble on endlessly about my gardening adventures (or misadventures, as they may well turn out to be!) but didn't want to make my non-gardening sewing buddies sit through it, so, a new blog is born. . .