Grown from seed: Tomatoes

Sometime in February we started vegetable seeds. We picked-up a seed sowing schedule from our local garden store, City Floral, and for the most part we've followed the recommendations. Matthew strung a grow light above a table in our basement and I sowed seeds in our starter trays. 

We're trying new veggies and testing some new growing methods this year, and honestly, here at This Old Alley House our gardening has reached a new level of obsession. I think it will be fun to highlight, describe and analyze our efforts to share with our faithful 1.35 readers as well as document for the future. 

First up- tomatoes. For Matthew's birthday Emma and I gave him water walls. This allowed us to plant our tomatoes in April. A month and a half earlier than we've ever put a tomato in the garden. And this has yielded "mondo" tomato plant pictured below. It's huge, grown from seed without any fertilizer and it already has a tomato. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of the puny little tomato plant we put in the garden - TRUST M - if you could see it you'd be as shocked as we are with the current size of our plant this early in the season. We got a few light skiffs of snow after we put our tomatoes out, but we closed up the top of our water walls and everything did just fine. Initially I was a bit skeptical because it didn't seem like our tomatoes were getting any bigger. However, sometime in late April/early May things really started heating up and our little plants took off growing. We left the water walls on until earlier this month after the leaves from our plants started to peek out the top. 

See our water walls with my little helper in the pic above.

Mondo tomato

The first fruit on Mondo tomato

Walking in a spider web

The school where our community garden is located has a great playground. After watering yesterday, Emma played around on this awesome web-like structure. I sent a picture to Matthew of Emma in the web - he said it makes her look old. I kind of agree.

More peas, please

Last summer I planted a few pea shoots in a flower garden. I offered the pods to Emma and it quickly became the place she'd check first in our backyard. Standing at the edge of the flower bed she would point with her chubby one year old hand and say, "ma, ma" (more, more). I'd check for new pods, sometimes showing her the peas inside, sometimes letting her gnaw on the whole pod.

This past fall we had raised garden beds built on the south side of our yard and we are in full garden mode this spring. I started peas very early and the pods are just starting to appear. Emma stands below the trellis of peas and asks us to pick her a pod. Today, Matthew propped her up on the ledge of the garden bed and it took all the self-control a two year old might possibly possess to keep her from picking the smallest pea pods.

Emma adopts a lizard

While waiting to have the oil changed in our car last week Emma checked out the waiting room toys. I convinced her to leave her babies at home; frequently she has one tucked snugly under her arm.

She checked out some Legos and then found a lizard. She was like a dog adopting a kitten that lost its mother. She picked up the lizard and tucked it under her arm, she gave it kisses, fed it the remainder of her applesauce and lucky me - lizard joined us in the bathroom.

Emma helps in the garden

Dirt on the nose...

Emma spends most of her days covered in dirt. The girl just loves to dig. 

 

Happy Valentine's Day!

I fail to document lots of things on this here blog of ours; like Emma's obsession with her bike helmet and the way she wore it everywhere for an entire weekend, and Matthew and I going all American Guns and visiting a shooting range in Vegas. We hosted the majority of Matthew's family for Thanksgiving and my brother came to visit for Christmas. Emma was so enamored with Duane she'd bypass me or Matthew and  go directly to him for pretty much everything during his visit. There are also the little day-to-day things like Emma eating dinner with her bunny and sharing her broccoli and beans and Matthew showing her how to make and wear play-dough eyeglasses and mustaches.

I've compiled a video montage (yes, my first montage!) of these and many other things for your viewing pleasure.

Untitled from Lisa Alley on Vimeo.

Weather

Last week it was sunny and warm. 

Emma found time to mow the lawn,

shovel dirt into Maya's water bowl, 

 and climb around in the herb garden box. 

Even Maya perched under our big maple tree to hunt squirrels. 

On Friday our yard turned in to this:) 

@#$!&! What's Emma looking at?

You mean the green scaly thing behind the glass? Oh, that. It's an Anaconda!!!