My First Garden!

This spring when I was shopping for groceries, I saw a stand for vegetable and herb seeds and got the inspiration to do a potted garden for on my back yard patio. I planted peppers, tomatoes, peas, beets, cilantro, rosemary, lavender, and basil. For some reason I have a green thumb for peas, beets, cilantro, rosemary, and basil, but a black thumb for the rest. I went to Lowes for supplies and realized they had nicely started peppers so I bought an assortment as well as a green bean plant. A few months later, after what seemed like forever bringing the pots in and out to prevent them from freezing but still allowing plenty of sunshine, I have vegetables! Ok, to be honest I just have peas and green beans but the peppers are coming along nicely and will be harvestable (is that a word?) within a few weeks. I've also been able to use the cilantro and basil, which is awesome to have for Mexican and Italian food ;) Here are some pictures!

First of all, my peas are large and in charge. I've already eaten like 20-25 pea pods off of these 6 plants. I hope they continue to kick out peas!

Next up, my lemon tree. When Grandpa Chase sent me some money for a graduation gift, I decided to actually do something with it that I thought would be fun. I researched lemon trees online and found out that you can keep them in any state all year round if you pot them. I ordered it from a site based in Florida and a week later got my lemon tree - in the mail!



It's grown quite a bit since then and is flowering like crazy. Each time the wind picks up, all the buds and baby lemons fall off. However, one lemon has hung on and is turning yellow! It's still the size of a pencil eraser but I'm so proud of my baby lemon.

Even Kobe likes the lemon tree and the square centimeter of shade it provides.

Here are my other plants that I have in pots.

Now for their close ups.
First up, the herbs. My cilantro was pretty out of control so I trimmed it down. I hope new fresh cilantro grows back so I have an excuse to make guacamole again. :)

Before the trim:

And after:

With the cilantro's hair cut, you can finally see the basil that was being overpowered.

And the rosemary, which I didn't think was going to come up, but was just a late bloomer I guess. These started growing about 3 weeks after everything else. Weird.

Kobe loves grass.

Here are my beets. Does anyone know why the leaves are getting brown? I give the plants plenty of water. I'm wondering if they can't handle so much direct sun?

And last but not least, here are the peppers. First, these are my biggest, the hot banana peppers:

And the habaneros:

And last but not least my green bell peppers:

I'm so excited for all of those to get mature so I can cook with them. Paul and I have already talked about how we want a house with a HUGE garden. I can't wait for that!

Now Kobe says, "Get outta here so I can suntan."