Saturday Farmers Market - 4/13/13

Saturday Farmers Market is a weekly event originally created by the beautiful and nature loving, Heather at Capricious Reader. It's a weekly event that celebrates gardening, be it your own garden or gardens around you; local food, be that at your local farmers market or at a restaurant or festival that celebrates eating locally; a recipe that you've created using fresh ingredients or a whole cookbook; and veggies, flowers, herbs and farm goods galore. Anyone and everyone can participate. It was originally started within the book blogging community but I'd love to see it expand beyond as well. You don't have to have a garden or grow veggies to participate, just post about how veggies, flowers, local farms, etc. have impacted your life this week. You'd be surprised! It may be too cold to grow things and it may be too hot to grow things, but you may just want to post about the plans you have for when the ground thaws. Or maybe even share with us how your community aims to keep things more sustainable or even about the local trails and nature offerings around you! This will also connect really well with Mrs. Beth Fish's Weekend Cooking ;) Thanks Heather for letting me take over the reigns for this wonderful idea that spawned from your creative brain :) Feel free to leave the link to your post in the Mr. Linky below, spread the word, and come back to read everyone else's posts as well! 

Well Spring is in full effect in my little part of the world. In Southern Louisiana we go straight from Winter to Summer really and have maybe a week or two where it actually feels like Spring and that's the kind of weather we're having right now. We enjoy it while it lasts because it doesn't last long :p Next week, for example, we're supposed to be in the mid to upper 80's and temperatures will only climb from there I'm sure. And the humidity will be ridiculous. The good news about living in temperatures like this though is that we get to garden pretty much year around! I spent last week sort of showing you the patio garden as a whole, so for now on, I'll show how you individual things are doing or what projects I have going on, or my gardening woes :p

Here's a project...I bought this little ponytail palm from Home Depot months ago for $1.98 and the poor thing was so rootbound and half dead. Upon further examination I saw that it was actually THREE ponytail palms all growing together. I've tried so many times to save them and repot them but for numerous reasons they've been damned. So in a last ditch effort, I'm trying to bonsai them now. We have an activity therapy department at the hospital that I work at and these little things have been abandoned for months. I don't know what they're supposed to be...soap dishes? Ashtrays? But I decided to drill a hole in the bottom of them and make them bonsai planters because they were so pretty :) So I trimmed the roots of the ponytail palms and planted them with some soil and put some mini pebbles on top. We'll see if this is a success or not :/

This is another little plant that I got from Gurneys! Only it won't be so little :p I am however AMAZED at it's rate of growth! It doubles in size every day since it popped out of the soil! It's a sunflower and it shipped as a bare root. But it's not just any kind of sunflower, it's a breed that comes back every year and it grows multiple flowers on one root. The picture of it just looked GORGEOUS!!!! It grows 3-10 feet tall. I'm hoping it leans more towards the three in my case because I don't know that the apartment would appreciate me having a 10 foot sunflower on my patio :p

I have my first jalapeno!!!! And actually I have a lot of peppers starting to come in now. This is just the only one that was big enough to get a picture of. I only planted three peppers this year, a jalapeno, a big bertha (which is a good stuffing pepper) and a cajun bell which is good just for chopping and cooking with. They all look fantastic!! I'm really happy with how the vegetable plants are doing this year! I hope they stay doing well! The only thing I've done different this year is give them all some fertilizer which is an all natural mix (it even has chicken poop in it!) that Gurneys makes. It's called "tomato food" but it's good for tomatoes, bell peppers and eggplant.

I bought these GORGEOUS purple and yellow african daisies and these other little purple flowers and they've been doing awful :( As you can see in the picture above, the daisies have all been dying. I don't know what could be causing this so I moved them to another spot today. They were in a very high sun spot on the patio before which I thought they would like...but maybe not? So now I have them over by the herbs where they'll get filtered sun. I'll see if that helps out any :/ I hope so because they're so so pretty and I would HATE to see them die :(

I was convinced that the orange tree was just going to be dormant all year. I was talking to Jeane the other day in the comments of her gardening blog about how I absolutely LOVE how gardens can teach you the virtue and the beauty of patience. Because they truly do. I'm a very impatient gardener ;) It's no secret that I love my plants with a passion and visit with them multiple times daily looking for new gifts from them. When everything in the garden started it's spring growth and the orange tree didn't, I was upset. But one day I saw the hint of what may have been new leaves coming from it's branches. Now, weeks later, it's covered in tiny new leaves and has many many many little buds on it like the ones above! Last year it gave me five oranges...I'm thinking I'll get more than that this year :) Now I'm impatient for the buds to open :p

Tomatoes are perhaps the most rewarding plants of all when it comes to impatience with gardening :p First you see those little signs of flowers forming, then you see that hint of yellow, then the beautiful little yellow flower open up and then you HOPE that a tomato forms from the flower....and sometimes it feels like it takes weeks before you actually get proof of a tomato coming out of the flower :p But how great is it when that tomato shows up and you get to watch it grow :) I have one that's really starting to grow and you can see that other little baby one right next to it. I'm sure there are plenty more on my three plants, I just haven't gone digging enough yet to find out :p And I'm FAMOUS for picking them as soon as there's a hint of a blush :p I don't want bugs or caterpillars to get them before I can, lol...so I always end up picking them and then they have to wait and ripen forever on the counter.

Cosmos have to be my absolute favorite wildflower. I don't know why but I just absolutely love them. They're gorgeous and when the sun hits them the right way they just reflect it's beauty right back at you :) I'm loving this little corner of my garden right now. It's the herb corner. This cosmo seeded itself in this little pot and it's growing with my Pride of Barbados tree (which me and Matt have named "the Rihanna tree") and the thyme which I've let flower even though I shouldn't but it's just so pretty when it flowers :p And next to that in the picture you can see my basil, mint and parsley all looking as healthy as can be! The herbs seem to REALLY light the filtered sunlight spot that they're in. Whenever I finally get into a house I'm going to have to remember to find a filtered sun spot to plant my permanent herb garden. They seem to thrive that way.

And I'll leave you with something adorable for this week :p Remember Henry from last year? If you didn't read my blog last year, Henry was the cutest little baby tortoise in the world that mysteriously showed up in my garden and I fell in love with him at first sight. I even went out to the pet store and bought him some alfalfa and a little wooden log house and mini pool. But he left the garden after staying there for two days :( Well I found Henry Jr. today :p

He's not a tortoise, he's just a little baby turtle :p But I literally squealed when I saw him, lol. I was walking to my car to go to work and there he was in the middle of the parking lot at my apartment complex. I was terrified the poor little guy was going to get run over by a car and squished. Matt was with me because we were going to get coffee before I went to work so I asked him to go put Henry Jr. in the flower planter so he would at least have something to munch on for a little while :p I then told Matt, "OMG HE NEEDS WATER!!!!!" To which Matt replied, "he will be fine....he lives in the wild and I'm sure he can find water on his own." And I'm sure that Henry Jr. did. Henry is no longer in the flower garden, but I hope he enjoyed his stay in it while he was in there and had a nice little snack :p

So tell me what's up in your neck of the woods and please leave links to your posts and spread the word in the Mr. Linky below!!!

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