Planting Tomatoes

Late last week my mom and I went out to Brickyard Farms to buy some tomato plants.  It's a great local plant nursery and farm, and the owner was super helpful.  Today we planted the tomatoes in the straw bales.  Here's hoping it is warm and sheltered enough on the south side of the garage for these plants to thrive.

I bought 14 plants, planning to put two in each bale.  Someone donated eight more tomato plants (the taller plants).  They were in the church office during the warmer weather, so some of them were a little worse for wear.  I planted as many as I could fit, putting three plants in each bale.  This whole straw bale garden is a bit of an experiment, so we'll see how things go!

Planting tomatoes.

The kids enjoyed the sunshine while we worked.

Old McElim had a farm...

Done!

Now we water and wait.

Planting the Pumpkin Patch and Signs of Life

Today we planted a row of seven hills of pumpkins!  Hopefully by mid-October or so we will have plenty of pumpkins ready to go.  I don't know how many children are included in the families that use the food pantry at TUMC, but I want each of them to have a pumpkin for a jack-o-lantern this year.

Removing the sod cap.  The kids are helping.

We added organic fertilizer.

Mixing the fertilizer into the soil, and loosening the soil for planting.

Pumpkin seeds!

This is very interesting.

Tucking the seeds in.

Our finished row of planted pumpkins.  Now we wait!

In other garden news, some of the seeds we planted earlier are sprouting!  Check it out:

Radishes!

This bean tried really hard, but a bird dug him up.  I may need to replant all the beans.

Kale!  (Parsley in the foreground.)

Lettuce!

Onion!