Gardening 2.0

Last year was my first attempt at growing vegetables. I knew very little to absolutely nothing about how to go about doing this and unfortunately I think it showed in what my garden produced. It didn't help I left for a week in June and left my garden to fend for itself. My expectations were also unrealistic - I expected my fruits to be huge, like what you buy in a grocery store. Yeah, not so much. I got a lot of small roma tomatoes and small green peppers, but that's about all I saw from my garden last year.

As you saw in my previous post, a few weeks ago I decided to give it another go and picked up some new starter plants at the local nursery. I decided to simplify my garden this year and just focus on a few plants. I didn't want to be as ambitious this year! I learned a lot from my mistakes.

I picked out - 2 tomato varieties, 2 green pepper plants, 4 cucumber plants, and 2 strawberry plants. I am trying my hand at cilantro again this year, which was a total disaster the year before. I think the plant survived a whole 2 days - this year it's still alive, I wouldn't say "going strong", but alive 2 weeks later.

It should be noted that I don't really eat strawberries and only use tomatoes in my sauces or Italian dishes. On hamburgers or in salads? Nope. My mom, sister, and whoever I can unload them on will benefit from any fruits I may produce =)

In just 2 short weeks, my plants have doubled in size and showing a lot of real progress! I even spot some tiny cucumbers starting to grow! 

Cucumbers

Green Peppers

Strawberries

Tomatoes

Fingers crossed I can keep things rolling and even take some time to find someone to tend to them while we're at the beach in a few more weeks.