Cucumber recipes, anyone?

When I returned from vacation last week, I came back to find my "garden" had become even more jungle-like. These plants are HUGE. Seriously, it's getting a little out of control. Pretty soon, I will have no sidewalk left.

I've pretty much lost all hope for the green beans; I think they're being suffocated by the other plants. I've seen a couple tiny zucchinis, but they haven't grown much.

However. My cucumber plant has not given up yet. Look what was waiting for me!

That's right, four giant, beautiful cucumbers! But even more important than looks was the taste test.... and my "burpless beauties" were delicious! I must say, it was a very proud moment to eat something that I had actually grown myself in my own backyard.

There are several more that will need to be picked soon too, so I foresee a considerable cuke harvest in my future, if nothing else. I already made this yummy cucumber salad... any other recipe recommendations?

P.S.  I promise that my next post will not be about vegetables. So if I haven't bored you to death already with my veggie saga, I hope you'll stay tuned later this week for my next project!

Live and learn.

Okay.  Y'all were right.

Things are getting a little out of control back here in my "garden."

My plants are ginormous, threatening to overtake the sidewalk. But still no sign of any cucumbers, green beans, or zucchini. I think I planted the seeds either in late May or early June, so it's been about two months. According to the seed packets, they should all be ready to harvest anywhere from 50-60 days after planting. Needless to say, I'm starting to get a little antsy. However, it has been ridiculously hot the past few weeks, and even though I'm trying to water them often, maybe they're protesting the heat wave. If so, I guess I can't really blame them.

Don't count your veggies before they grow

Okay. I'm trying not to get too excited about this.

Remember when I decided to start a vegetable garden?

I have a bit of a black thumb and admittedly didn't really know what I was doing. Planting seeds seems easy enough, but I figured if there was a way to screw it up, I would.

Well, here's what it looks like now. Be still, my beating heart!

Somehow, I have managed to keep my vegetables alive, even despite the scorching heat we've had! I would say the cucumbers are thriving the most, followed by the zucchini and then the green beans.

I should probably mention that in my initial post, a couple of you gave some helpful recommendations to get some chicken wire or fencing for the vines to grow up instead of out. So they wouldn't get out of control. As you can see, I did not heed that well-meaning advice. My only excuse is pure laziness. At this point I've decided to just let them grow wherever they may.

Not all of the seeds I planted survived, but that's probably a good thing given the limited space here. I'm also seeing some yellow blossoms on the cucumbers... another promising sign, yes?

It looks like they should start producing any time now, but I still haven't seen anything yet... So I'll continue to wait and remain cautiously optimistic about my future veggie crop. Cross your fingers for me!

The seeds have been sown...

If you're a regular reader around here, it's no secret that I have a pretty bad track record with keeping plants alive. Nevertheless, that hasn't quelled my urge to try my hand at growing vegetables. So when the opportunity arose recently, I took it.

Our sidewalk project left us with a rectangular strip of dirt that was just begging to grow something. Remember what it looked like back here before the sidewalk? Let's reminisce...

Yeahhh.... pretty trash-tastic.

So once the sidewalk and resulting landscaping bed were completed, I figured there was no better time to attempt to be a gardener and plant some veggies. But first, I had to clean up the post-sidewalk mess:

Bricks, boards, concrete chunks, more bricks, potted daylilies, snow fence, and more bricks.

So after a couple hours of moving everything out of the way and tilling up the soil, I finally had an area to work with. (I ran out of places to put all the brick, so just had to line it up around my "garden"...maybe I'll actually put a brick border here someday?)

I decided to get zucchini, cucumber, and green beans. Hopefully they are all pretty easy to grow for a novice like me. I have no idea if this is enough space to be planting all these things, but I guess I'll find out. I feel like I've been told that the cucumber plant spreads a lot.... Anyway, after studying the directions on the seed packets, I got out my little hand shovel and got to work.

As it turns out, there are a lot of seeds in these packets, and I didn't end up using them all. Maybe that means I should have a bigger garden than this? I probably put them too close together as it is.

This picture looks pretty much the same as before, but the labeled flags are there as proof that the seeds have been planted.

I think seedlings are supposed to sprout in about a week or two, so now I just have to play the waiting game. And, more importantly, remember to water them. If they all grow, then I'll have some veggies ready to harvest in about 50-60 days. And if not, then I guess I only wasted about $8 on the seeds. 

Do you have any experience growing vegetables? What do I need to know?