Eclipsed $100 in Produce out of the garden

Just went over $100 dollars of produce out of our garden.  Harvesting something everyday now.  Tomato's are averaging 1-1.5 pounds every couple of days!   By far it's been the biggest producer.  Here are some highlights:

19.5 lb of Tomato's

3.5 lb Red Potato's

5 lb of Russet Potato's

2 lb Bell Pepper

Ton's of little Thai Chili's

3 lb Cucumber

1 lb Okra

1 lb Lettuce

1.5 lb Green Bean

2 lb Beetroot

1 lb Squash

Good start so far this year.  Hopefully continued production as the blueberry's, blackberry's, and grapes ripen in late June.

Recovered over $45: Dinner completely out of the garden and some garden pests and problems

After being out of town for four days, I returned to an abundance!  The growth in that little time was amazing.  The next two pictures are what I harvested Sunday night. So far, we have recouped over $45 dollars out of the garden!  Only going to get better!

For dinner tonight, I fried the okra in a milk batter and sauteed the onion, green bean, Thai chili, and squash. I also took some of the tomato's and made a pint of tomato sauce for use later.

This reminds me, I need to clean the stove top!  Ooops.

For the pests, came across a couple.  The dreaded squash bug and the corn earworm!  The squash bugs I killed by soaking the plant with water and waiting for them to crawl up away from the water.  Then spray them with a mixture of dawn soap and water.  They die pretty quickly.

I inspected the corn and found one ear with the silk dead and discolored.  Opened it up and low and behold, hello mister corn earworm!  Killed it and looked through the rest of the corn and didn't see anymore, but they are still out there.

I did have some blossom end rot using the grow bags.  The watering hasn't been consistent enough and when it isn't, calcium can't get to the fruit and thus the rot.  Probably about 10-12 tomato's.  I've since placed some of the bags in a kids pool and kept an inch or so of water with great results.

Potato's going in, Seedling Update

First, the potato's.  The buds have come in well, I'll only plant the strongest buds in the bags.  The red's seem to have budded a lot more than the Russet's have but both are good enough to plant.

I might be going a little much with how many I'm planting in the bags but we'll see when everything is mature.  Bag one 4 Russet, Bag two 5 Russet, Bag three 6 Russet, Bag four 6 Red.  I'll weigh the yield to see if the amount of plants made a difference or not.

Bag one, 4 Russet

Bag two, 5 Russet

Bag three, 6 Russet

Bag four, 6 Red

Now the seedlings.  True leaves have emerged throughout the seedlings.  Everything except the Cayenne peppers seem to be doing well.  Might have had a bad batch of seeds with those, none have germinated and I replanted.

Celery is coming up, very young, just took longer than I expected.  I added the second flat which has onions, eggplant, spinach, sage, and oregano.  A lot of it is coming up now.



I started watering with a mixture of fish emulsion to give the seedlings a little boost.  Looking at the warmer February and March, I may be putting plants into the garden a little earlier than March 10th.