How Does Your Garden Grow?

It is our great desire to grow much of our own food; our being mine and my oldest, mind you!  We dabbled in it a little last year and are trying to expand a little more this year.  Keep in mind, we live in a rented house right now and do not have tons of land.  As a matter of fact, out our back door you can see a golf course.  Not exactly my dream land, but we are trying to make do with what the Lord has provided for this season. 

Anyway...if you are looking for a how to...you are in the wrong place friend!  Our biggest success last year was cucumbers and jalapeno peppers.  Not exactly life sustaining crops. huh?  We did manage to freeze tomatoes for sauce, but not nearly the amount we needed.  We have planted 16 tomato plants but this is what they look like right now...

Not exactly encouraging!  If you have an idea of what's wrong, please, feel free to clue us in!  We did just get 24 hours straight of rain so I was in hopes they would have perked up this morning, but as you can see....NOPE!

These are some of our squash plants.  We cheated and did not start these from seeds this year.  We  planted half in the garden and half in containers, as you can see.  There are zuchinni plants in another container as well.  Reason being... SQUASH BUGS!  They took over in the garden last year and ruined about all of our plants.  (The oldest does NOT want to put any chemicals in the garden!  Me, I wanted to stand out there with insecticide and just wait to spray one of those little bugs!) We want to test the theory that maybe some plants will be a little more protected in the containers.  If you are shaking your head and know this is not going to work, don't tell us!  ;)  We want to pretend it is a good idea for a few more weeks.

Here are our onions and potatoes, both planted by my father-in-law a few weeks ago.  (His garden by the way, is amazing, and puts ours to shame.)  Both are coming up beautifully, go figure.  This family does not even like onions for the most part, other than I do cook with them, and we may end up with tons.  The potatoes will be great!

This is one of 3 pepper plants.  Again, we do not just eat peppers, but I do like to cook with them so the plan is just to chop up and freeze what we are able to get.

The herbs.  Again, another cheater plant.  We have tried seeds numerous times with no luck, so I finally got mad gave in and bought a few plants. 

Cucumbers are in, but have not come up yet.  I still have hope!

Here are some of our flowers, maybe we should just stick to those!

taken by R

In my dreams my garden looks amazing.

For now, I will settle for this...

It does have a fence now, thank you to the deer!

Someday, when this Air Force moving family settles down in one place, I pray we will have abundant land and a place for my dream garden.  Hey, maybe by then we will know what we are doing!  Until, we welcome any advice and appreciate you muffling your laughter!

How about you?  What are you growing, and as long as you are writing, share your best gardening advice!  Please!

This post is linked up to Our Simple Farm...Simple Living Wednesdays.  Pop in and give her a visit, you will love what you see!

We are also linking up with The Homeschool Village!  YOu may get to see some better gardens there!