First Official Harvest

Harvest Day
This week I had my first official harvest. What I mean is this is the first piece of food that I have grown from seed that I will be able to eat. We have picked cherry tomatoes before, but those don’t count since they came from a plant we purchased.
The harvest this week is a yellow squash accompanied by some thai basil. I picked the squash at 5 inches, I probably should have let it grow to 6 but I wanted to get it before a bug tried to ruin it.

Butterfly Garden
The second part of the butterfly garden is done. I have been diligently nursing the new flowers to make sure the summer heat doesn’t cook them before they become established. A few rains lately have seemed to stabilize them. Hey Butterflies, have you noticed the vacancy sign?!? Move in specials!!!

Coming soon to a future harvest:

Juliet and Cherry tomatoes
Beans
Okra

Butterfly Garden

After two days of plant shopping and manual labor, we completed the left side of our new butterfly garden. A special thanks to Palmer’s Garden and Goods who put up with our many questions and gave us great advice on what to plant. We ended up choosing a backdrop of Firebush for a hedge-like look that still provides nectar. The front consists of Porterweed, Salvia, and Pentas.

Here is the before picture of the left front of the house.

One of the pictures of planning how the garden was going to lay out.

Side view of the finished product.

Front view of finished garden.

I chose the Porterweed for my garden because it is used as a larval plant for butterflies. I figured it would be a better way to get butterflies if I keep a host plant in the garden for them. I chose this particular one because it already has a cocoon hanging on its limbs.

Happy July!

My dog Anastasia gives my garden one nose up. So if she approves it must be good. She likes wandering around the yard while I am checking on my garden.
Here is the latest full shot of the garden. You will probably notice first the huge Okra plant on the right. It is growing fast but still yet to produce any flowers. The beans in the center are nice and bushy but the pods are not growing large enough to use at this time.

The “unidentified” squash still has not been fully identified. Signs point to it being a spaghetti squash. There is one large squash growing. All other female flowers have died rotting deaths before they get to ripe. I suspect I need to do more research on what is happening. I think I will be happy if I can just get the one squash to ripen.
Here is a view of the tomatoes and you can see the squash in the distance.
Found this guy hanging out on my beans the other day. I wanted to kill him but then I realized he is a parasitic wasp (I think it is a paper wasp). He kills all the little buggers that like to destroy my plants. He is my friend – as long as he doesn’t sting me.