Gardening-I think I can, I think I can

I am admittedly, a horrible gardener. Every year I plant tomato plants, and hope for the best. Last year, was the best crop I have ever gotten-one amazingly beautiful tomato-deep red. Until this year, I did not know when to plant, what to plant, how to plant. I would see plants for sale, and plop them in the dirt. Mark made me a garden last year. It's amazing. It is elevated beds with rocks around them to sit on, and paths between them so that I can reach the plants. It has the drip irrigation system, which the plants seems to love, and I have a couple of rolling bin composters.

I have planted twice now, and last year, I got so many cucumbers, that I was able to make 10 jars of pickles. (Someone later told me cucumbers are supposed to be the easiest to grow-thanks a lot)

I was extremely zealous and planted 60 heads of lettuce over the winter. Our rock squirrel ate every leaf. The couple of kale I planted, he ate as well-leaving us about three leaves. Hmm, I will not be frustrated.

When in Israel, all of the amazing flowers, birds, trees, fruit trees, bee hives, blew wind into my "gardening" sail again. As soon as we overcame the flu (little goodbye gift from the airline fairy), I started zealously planting. The above photo is a hibiscus I found at Burns Nursery. I got 4 of them, the only 4 they had of this variegated color.

Everywhere we go, I pick up one more tomato plant. The last place was a bee festival, (yes, we are dorks), and someone was selling heirloom tomatoes. I have four tomato plants, all different sizes, and he said it's good to plant them at different times and stages, so that you get a continual harvest-accidentally got that right. Also, he said to bury the tomato plant 3 inches deeper than the main stalk?? I'm trying it on the plant I got from him. This year, I went to gardeners supply.com to get "professional" tomato cages. Last year, the cheap ones seemed to be too small when all was said and done.

This year, after planting each plant, I made up a gallon jug of water with a tablespoon of unsulphured molasses in it. I poured it on the flowers around the pool and on a couple of things in the garden. I've done this in years' past -not consistently, but when I've done it, my fruit trees have done very well. I happened to have a bunch of molasses, so thought I would give the plants a little hello gift. WOW WOW WOW-the flowers have doubled in size, the arrangements are going crazy, and it has peaked my interest in molasses. So, I found a recipe for homemade fertilizer which consists of Alfalfa Meal-1 cup, Epsom Salts-1 cup, 3 TBSP. of Molasses, and four gallons of water. Let the recipe sit overnight, then water your plants with it. I admit, I have not done this yet, but the Epsom Salts are supposed to help produce AMAZING tomatoes, so I will be fertilizing my tomatoes this year-a first.

We composted last year, and my garden has awesome earthworms this year-which has encouraged me to compost again. I got cute "little" com posters, but my garden is a little bit big for them, they don't turn enough to cover the whole thing, so we will be getting larger com posters when I see them at Costco again. My fingers are crossed, there may be some green in my thumbs after all!!