The Return of Saturday Farmers Market

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! 

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So here's what's been going on in my garden lately! I'm going to spend this first week just giving you an all around overview of my little patio garden then in the future weeks I'll give progress updates, what's growing, what new plants are coming in, what pests I'm fighting and how I'm fighting them :p what experiments I'm doing, and what's growing inside the apartment too!

 First up is my little herb garden which seems to be doing fantastic! Couldn't be happier with it. In the box planter on the right, I have parsley, chives and oregano. Down the middle is basil, mint and rosemary. And that little pot on the left of the picture is greek basil which I LOVE. I also have some thyme growing in that planter in the back! Matt actually made a mask for his face with some crushed mint  the other day and he said it felt wonderful! May have to try that myself :) I can't WAIT to have  a real garden but I'm quickly learning that patio gardening can be just as rewarding!

This is one of my little bulb planters that have been kind of disappointing. The foliage coming up is absolutely GORGEOUS but I'm afraid none of the bulbs are going to flower :( The winter just wasn't cold enough. I don't think my mom's tree is going to give her any lemons either because of the awful winter. She had tons of gorgeous blossoms but they all fell off and there are no signs of any lemons at all coming in :(

Here's a kind of overall view of the veggies right now...as of now, I have three tomato plants, three peppers (two bell peppers and a jalapeno) and an eggplant. the two little trees you see in the back are citrus trees! Baby ones. I have a feeling these will be added to as we go :p 

The tomatoes are already putting out LOTS of flowers and I already can spot at least ONE little tomato :D Hooray!! There will be tomatoes this year!! I always get nervous growing tomatoes in containers...they just don't seem to do as well for me as the do in the ground. But it looks like this may be a decent year!! Lets keep our fingers crossed :p

And here if you look close enough you'll see little tiny buds! These are two citrus trees that I ordered from Gurneys :) I didn't expect blossoms at all this year on them but I actually have some! The one on the left is a dwarf meyer lemon and the one on the right is a dwarf key lime. I also have a full sized orange tree that has lots of blossoms! It would be so cool to get fruit this year!!! By the way, if you haven't discovered Gurneys yet....I'm obsessed with them....

And I'll leave you this week with my nasturtiums which I'm in love with :) They're the only flowers blooming right now, but they make me smile every day as there are new flowers blooming every day. I planted these last year around this time from seed and they never flowered all year....now all of a sudden they're flowering like crazy and they're just gorgeous :) So how's your garden doing? I'd love to hear all about it!!