How does your garden grow?

As summer draws to a close and school returns, baby gets closer and other deadlines approach, I find my spare time for blogging is harder to come by.  I knew it would get like this, which is why my husband and I took a vacation two weeks ago.  It was our first vacation together in a couple years and I guess you could call it a babymoon or a desperate escape from Texas summer heat after both our summers were packed with camp after camp with our youth groups.  We went to beautiful, cool Estes Park, CO just outside Rocky Mountain National Park and were able to just be lazy, enjoy the mountains, rest up and enjoy some "dolce far niente" while we still can.  I think the weather alone made us feel miles away from home.  It's been the hottest, dryest summer in central Texas and our record-breaking amount of 100+ days still continue.  But there, the high's were in the low 80's and it reminded me that one day....seemingly forever away...fall would come.  It made me all kinds of excited when I realized that even despite our Texas heat, it's time to start planning a fall vegetable garden!  It seems insane to plant seeds right now, when there's no water to be found and even established plants are burning up, but it's time!

I started researching some of our options and tried to think about what fruits and vegetables we'd actually use.  I tried to remember what has worked well and what I've learned from miserable failures in years past.  In the end, we came up with a list for a full and delicious garden that will include: radishes, cucumbers (for slicing and pickling), carrots, broccoli, strawberries, spinach, garlic, onions, and potatoes!  Some of these still can't be planted for a while yet, so I'll have to find the strength to be patient.  We're also going to try some new herbs - stevia and parsley.  I'm looking forward to using the stevia in some hot teas this winter.  I did the research to find which varieties of seeds were recommended for our area and we went down to the Natural Gardener to find it all.  We got most of what we were looking for, including compost to get our garden beds ready for our little seedlings.  Now we were ready to get our hands dirty!

Since it's death valley outside, we're obviously going to be starting the seeds indoors.  I used Jiffy organic seed starting soil, filled up my trays and put together some make-shift plant markers.  Also, I should note that these were old, previously used seed trays that resulted in tragedy (apparently you have to water plants to keep them alive) - so I had to be sure to wash them really well and get rid of all the old dirt and gunk.

I used toothpicks to make tiny holes in the soil for my tiny seeds, dropped two sometimes three seeds in each hole and they lightly covered them up.  I gave them a good watering with the mist setting on my garden sprayer and covered them with the plastic lid that comes with the tray.

Isn't it amazing how tiny seeds are?  and how quickly they transform?  My cucumbers are already 6 inches tall in just the week since I planted these and took these pictures.  This morning I planted a second round of seeds so we have a staggered harvest.  Fingers crossed for a succesful growing season!