Monster Cucumbers!

It's too bad these giants turned out bitter!  Aren't they just so fun to look at though?!  Oh well, off to the compost pile they go... I couldn't help but make a little Instagram collage too. hehe

Today's Harvest: Lemon Cucumbers & A Tiny Bell Pepper

It seems like every day I get to pick a few more goodies out of our garden.  

Today I found 3 beautiful lemon cucumbers just asking to be cut up and thrown into a delicious salad.

I also found this little green bell pepper.  

According to the label on the plant, this guy is supposed to be red.  

Upon close inspection this pepper was telling me it was ready to be harvested...I think.  

The skin was getting slightly wrinkled on the bottom and the body of the pepper felt hollow and pliable.

Aren't they so pretty?!

Six Links You'll Love

1. Love this printed tea towel by Yao Cheng!
2. Isn't this lion softie the absolute cutest?!
3. Concrete planter....♥
4. Curious little sloth hanging out on my collar.
5. Lemon cucumber grown in our self-watering garden!
6. I can't wait to get started on this vintage-inspired crochet potholder.

For The Love Of Corn

In The Garden Today

Lemon Cucumber

These are so pretty when they are ripe.  The skin is a pearly white where it's been stretched out with little strips of yellow shining through.  

Bell Pepper

I was so excited to find this guy hiding between the giant tomatoes.  I wasn't sure that we would get any this season because their leaves are all deformed from being blocked out from the sun.  They are survivors.

A dead bat in the house....wait...still, worth mentioning.

Willy: "Mommy, I have some really sad news.  I found this dead bat on the stairs."  Holding this tiny dead bat in his sweet little hand.

Not pictured but also worth mentioning:

Coyote chillin' in our front yard (driving the dogs nuts), and a mouse in my car...literally IN my car...as I'm driving.  Yeah.

Veggie Garden Harvest & Tomato Worms

Ahhhh Saturdays.  To me Saturday means coffee in the garden, extra time to search for tomato worms, inspect strange bugs, and dote over my succulents.  Glorious.

This morning I harvested some Snap Peas that the kids started at school.  They put a paper towel in the bottom of a plastic sandwich bag, added a little water and dropped a seed in.  I was amazed at how quickly they germinated with such little sunlight.  We brought the seedlings home and planted them in the garden and they took off!  They are definitely going on my seed list for next year's garden.

I squished about eight tomato worms this morning.  Five to eight seems to be the daily average.  Since tomato worms are the same color as the leaves they can be hard to spot.  So, rather that searching for the worms, I look for their poo!

See the little black dots on that leaf?  Those are tiny tomato worm poo!  After you spot those, just look up.

Do you see him standing up on the leaf?  He knew I was looking for him so he got in his defensive stance.  When they get bigger they actually start making a clicking sound (with their teeth?).

Don't forget to shake the poo off the leaf below so you can find fresh poo the next day!

Daily Garden

Well, I failed miserably at the daily photo challenge. I'm not too broken up about it though because a new daily activity formed rather organically in April.

Will and I dream of being completely self sufficient some day. We try to implement things in our lives that either make us more self sufficient or provide an opportunity to become more self sufficient in the future.

Growing our own food is not something that is necessary right now (we can just go to the store and buy what we need for less than it takes to grow our own) but gaining the experience in doing so is invaluable.

So, this year my super awesome and amazingly talented hubby decided to test out a self-watering, raised bed garden planter.  After some research he grabbed a few ideas from some different sources and came up with his own plan for getting it done. He tweaked it a bit more and then went for it using materials that we have on hand. This is the absolutely beautiful garden that he came up with.

"Why is it so cool?", you may ask. Let me tell you!!

#1: I only have to water once a week. Yes, once a week!! I could probably go longer when the weather cools (we are hoping to use this garden year round since our winters are so mild). From what I've read, sub-irrigated planters can save up to 80% water. Love the sound of that!!

#2: No rodents snacking on my veggies. We have are big problem with squirrels and cotton tail rabbits about this time of year and I haven't seen any nibbles yet.

#3: Virtually no weeds. I pulled ONE weed (we think it came from a bird poo). We added the cover option to help with that (those criss-crossed pipes).

#4: Using the principles of Square Foot Gardening we were able to fit a lot of plants in a compact space (our garden is 4'x8').

#5: Having the planter raised makes gardening a fun task. I find myself wandering out to check on it at least a couple times a day.

I'm sure there are a bunch more reasons why sub-irrigated planters are a superior for of gardening. I just can't get enough and have begun my own small pot versions too!

I've started a Daily Garden Journal on Pinterest. If you want to see my garden grow from Day 4 (I missed day 1-3!) Click here and follow my board for daily updates.
This is what I pinned this morning:

The Big Green...

Sario adventures with the Datura plant!

If you all remember, I have a "Datura Stramonium" growing in my front yar-dirt.  I've been so fascinated by this plant!  It popped up and grew quickly into a large, leafy beauty with big white trumpet flowers that blossomed every morning and died every afternoon with nearly no water or care at all!  One day as I was out inspecting my plant, I noticed these little green balls attached to the leaves.  Suspecting that they were some sort of egg, I pulled off as many as I could find every day for about a week.  Eventually I lost interest and decided that it might be more fun to actually see what they were.

Low and behold, the green dots WERE eggs!  After just a couple of days without mothering my Datura plant I noticed several chewed up leaves. As i began searching the leaves for the culprit I noticed tiny little green worms!  Well, I'm not sure if they are called worms or caterpillars but oh how cute I thought they were.  Did I pick them off and squish them?  No way!  Let the adventure continue!

About a week went by without paying any interest to the Datura at all.  One evening my husband mentioned to me that my weed didn't look like it was doing so well.  I proceeded to tell him (rather snobbishly) that it always looks that way in the afternoon because the white flowers have wilted and shriveled into brown blobs from the hot afternoon sun.  Little did I know that my dear sweet husband was very seriously right!  Saturday morning as I went out to water my lovely succulent garden (I'm hoping to introduce them on my blog soon!), I was greeted with this:
 

AND THIS:

 

Those sweet little green wormies had eaten the ENTIRE plant and had grown into enormous tomato worms!  There were two of these big boys inching across the gravel toward the unknown.  Afraid that they would climb up my husband's truck and try to make a cocoon in there only to get squished the next day, I snatched them up and we began our search for a better home for them.  

After seeing mommy holding them the kids decided they wanted a try.  The little claw feet were a little too creepy for their sweet soft hands so Willy came up with the great idea of letting it climb on his shirt.  If you ask me that is a lot creepier, but I was just glad to see that they wanted to experience them too.  (Notice Will is not in any of these photos.  He decided he was much more comfortable taking pictures than holding a big creepy crawly green thing! Haha!)

 

After we were done letting the big

green worm thing crawl on us we found a nice leafy tree nearby and sent him on his way (still assuming at this point that he would find a twig and make a cocoon while hanging from it, like a butterfly). 

He looked pretty happy up there in that tree.  I was certain we would be able to check on him and watch the process of him turning into a winged thing.

This was worm #2 which I decided to put over near my succulents.  He wasn't super happy there though and ended up back on the gravel heading towards nowhere land.  I thought this picture was interesting though.  Take a look at the big spike on his rear end.  I will mention it later.

After sending these two off I refocused my attention on the now bare and scraggly datura.  Much to my surprise (and delight at this point since we were having a wonderful and educational Saturday adventure!) there were several more worms that weren't quite full enough to leave home.

They ate all the way down to the stalk.  So amazing!

Willy and I decided to check out another datura plant that was a little further out on our property.  It looked like it still had leaves on it and we wanted to see if there were any eggs or worms on it.  There were!!  We were so happy!  Stay tuned for Part 2!!