How does your garden grow, final installment

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Our tomatoes were growing so well.

Even the green peppers were thriving in spite of the intense heat, but I have to admit that they were a bit stunted because of it.

By the last week in July, the tomato plants each had a couple of blossoms.

And then the reason for the use of the past tense. Sorry there are no pictures since I wasn't there to witness the catastrophe, but something went terribly wrong.

One morning early in August Ah-ma went up to the porch to check on her plants and was greeted by some crawly critters. I didn't get the whole story since my Chinese isn't very good in terms of bugs or worms or fungi or whatever she was trying to describe. She took them all outside - planters, soil, and all - and packaged them up for the garbage truck. When Keanu and I got home from school, she told us the story but we didn't have the heart (i.e. stomach) to check the bags to see the crawlies for ourselves.

So our garden failed. Perhaps it was the heat and/or too much water. Perhaps something else. Who knows. We're resigning ourselves to buying tomatoes and peppers in the supermarket, at least for a while.

Hope you've got better luck!

How does your garden grow, part 4 - seedlings

It's been a whole 2 weeks since planting, and we've had great results. We had marigolds by Friday morning (3.5 days!) and we've got about a million tomatoes and green peppers now. We were supposed to have planted 20 seeds in each planter with the intention of thinning those that grew and not expecting everything to grow. Obviously we planted more than that as we've got about 30 seedlings in each planter! As more of them are getting more than just their first 2 leaves now, we'll have to add some plant food soon. I think the cool weather we're having is slowing down the growing process.


Keanu is still wondering when there will be flowers!

Green peppers:

Marigolds:

How does your garden grow, part 3 - planting

After nearly 2 weeks of looking at the gardening "stuff" in the hallway, we found an uninterrupted time in which we weren't running off to play tennis, playgroup, doctor's offices, the swimming pool, or the park. We were finally able to plant our tomatoes on Monday evening. Here are a couple of pictures of my little gardeners.

First, you have to scoop the potting soil into the planter.

Then you dig 10 tiny holes with a chopstick and drop two seeds in each hole. This is good practice counting. Too bad we didn't get to count past 10. He still wonders if fourteen or eleventeen comes after ten. We're working on that.

These pictures are a bit deceiving. It looks like the little sister was content to watch her big brother have all the fun. Of course that's not true. The problem is that when she's trying to help, I'm trying to keep the soil from going all over the room. or the seeds. or the soil. or the little sister. And then I don't have time to take pictures. We can just imagine that she was content to watch.

Watch carefully to see how our garden grows!

How does your garden grow? part 2 - painting

Ok, so to go along with our two bigger planters for the veggies, I picked up a couple of cheap planters for the marigolds and decided that the kids could paint them first. Last Friday Keanu was off playing tennis with Kevin, but Kate and I got started with the painting anyway.

First, you've got to put on your painting apron and sleeve protectors. Kate LOVES Keanu's yellow Spongebob apron even though she's got her own pink KiKi and LaLa one. If you try to put it on her, she screams for her "Baobao!"
Then you get situated in your high chair with paper on the table and a plastic pot with a bit of paint squeezed on. Smear it around until you're happy with the results.
And here are Kate's masterpieces

How does your garden grow? part 1

The idea of starting a garden on our roof or balcony has been in the back of my mind for several years, but just recently have I done anything about getting started with this experiment of container gardening. Two weeks ago, I made a trip to B&Q (think Home Depot, only a bit smaller) to see what my options were. After examining the rather meager assortment of seed packets, I was a bit dismayed as the recommended sowing periods for all the veggies took a hiatus during the sweltering summer months of May - September. Will we just be able to grow flowers? That idea didn't sound terrible, but I liked the idea of the kids seeing where the veggies that they love actually come from.

So, through a translator (I didn't trust my childcare- or taxi-Chinese to get me very far with gardening topics), I was able to ask the master gardener at the store a couple of questions. He said roughly "Oh, no problem. Keep them in bright sun and water them every day and you'll have tomatoes in a month and green peppers in 2!" So, I picked up two planters, some tomato and green pepper seed packets, some potting soil, and some fertilizer and set off for an adventure. Oh, and I decided the kids might like some color, so I got some flowers, too.

No, I didn't get these, even though I was really tempted because I'm sure they would love to blow the seeds. I'm just not sure I want them blowing around my porch! The flowers are going to be marigolds on our porch.