sprouts!

Our first experiment in container gardening is, so far, successful! We have spinach sprouting up in our little starter pots, and will soon move them to larger pots so they have a little more room to grow. Spinach is usually cultivated in rows, but we will probably end up with lots of pots with a few plants each in little bunches. We are starting to gather any and every container we can get our hands on, because if all the seeds we planted come up, we are going to have a LOT of plants to pot! We figure we will give some plants away if friends and neighbors are interested, or else just give away some produce if we end up with too much for ourselves. That would be a wonderful predicament to be in, considering this is our first gardening venture.

It has been fun to watch the tiny plants sprout out of the soil- and the girls are learning about how a plant goes from seed to seedling, and soon to fully grown plant. Daisy and Hazel helped poke the little seeds down into the dirt, so they thought it was pretty cool to see them coming back up out of the dirt on top of a little green plant!

So right now, our little garden consists of 2 tomato plants which are doing well are starting to get a few blossoms on them already, and some cilantro and parsley. Then in the seed pots we have spinach, cucumber bushes (small cucumbers that grow well in containers) and sweet bell peppers in several colors. Our biggest challenge as the weather gets warmer will be keeping all of these plants from drying out in the desert sun. We will probably have to water twice a day within a month or so from now as the temperature creeps upwards. We do get some shad in the afternoon, so we can move the plants around and find the best spot for them if they are getting too droopy.

Hopefully we'll be eating spinach salad with fresh tomatoes before you know it!! Yippy!