My 1st Garden: Trouble with Squirrels

Green pepper plants
This is just a quick update on my garden. My peppers are still inside, but I think I can plant them soon. Here they are in their makeshift pots. I learned that I need to upgrade them from the starter pots (toilet paper rolls), so they went into tea boxes. I'm determined to spend as little as possible on this project.

Cherry tomato plants
The tomatoes I started inside are now in the ground. I planted five but only four remain. Some critter (I imagine a squirrel) dug up one of the tomato plants the same day I planted it. When I checked on them the next day the poor plant had been dug up and then tossed aside and left to die. I guess I'm going to have to get used to this, but as my first "casualty" it was kind of sad.

Since then, however, the rest of the plants are doing fine. My husband is looking into making cages for them.

Snap pea plant
As well as the plants I started inside, I also planted snap/snow peas and carrots. The carrots are coming up well so far but don't look great in pictures yet. I'll show you those as they get bigger.

This picture is of a snap pea plant. I'm not entirely sure if I'm going to need a pole for these. I'll look it up at some point.

And that's it for this update. I'm hoping the squirrels don't cause more issues. I really have no idea what I would do if they become a problem. I'd appreciate any advice from readers!

My 1st Garden: Baby Steps

I'm going to swallow my pride and share my gardening experiences with you this year. This will be the first garden I've had since I was a kid living on a small farm. I've wanted to start one for many years now, but there was always one thing or other in the way.

One of the biggest factors holding me back was my own fear and sense of intimidation. There is so much involved in gardening that I don't know. But as with most things in my life I'm just going to plunge in. I'll find resources and get help from friends along the way. :) So this may be a learning-from-my-mistakes year, but that is still forward progress so I'll try to stay positive.

So I'm now in a house with ample yard space to start a veggie garden. The space I'm going to use has been neglected for a couple years. So this first picture is after a day of work trying to find the ground under all the leaves.

The second thing I've done is to start a few plants inside. I'm trying to do this garden on the cheap, so I loved this idea of using toilet paper rolls for starting seeds. Check out Nature Moms Blog for that and more great tips.

I've got two containers like this going. I started cherry tomatoes and green peppers and catnip. I'm crossing my fingers hoping they'll work out.

So that's it for this update. I have a feeling the next update might involve some cursing over my sore back after digging out the garden plot...