Michael & Liz are Bloggable

One week ago today everything was planted and it's been awesome to see the changes in such a short time. The past week has been unseasonably warm (reaching up to 90 degrees some days), so I decided it was time to plant. We decided to get the seedlings of things we were able to at a local greenhouse, and the rest would be planted as seeds directly in the ground. From the greenhouse (Gunters Greenhouse to be exact...check it out if you're local) we bought:

Red Onion
White Sweet Onion
Buttercrunch lettuce
Strawberries
Tomatoes - Big Boy, Roma, Sweet 100 Cherry
Peppers - Japapeno, Hot Banana, Golden Wonder (sweet), California Wonder (sweet)

It turns out that buying seedlings from a greenhouse is WAY cheaper than I expected so we overbought a lot, especially for tomatoes and peppers.

Then we went straight to Lowes to buy seed packets:

Cantaloupe - Hearts of Gold
Watermelon - Allsweet
Cucumber - Muncher
Pumpkin - Small Sugar
Summer Squash - Fordhook Zucchini
Carrots - Danver 126
Lettuce - Vivian Romaine
Spinach - Baby Leaf
Beans - Tenderpod
Parsley - Big Italy
Cilantro - Coriander

After only 1 week, all of the seeds have germinated and popped out of the ground except the carrots, romaine, watermelon, parsley, and cilantro. Zucchini came out of the ground after only 4 days! I didn't expect to see anything until today, but it's been thrilling to go out every day and see something new out of the ground.

One huge thing I learned over the past week is that transplanted plants, and new seeds need a lot more water than I was expecting to give them. The buttercrunch lettuce had the most trouble after being transplanted - on Sunday it was a very light green and all the leaves were down to the ground. I watered everything, and just two hours later all the leaves were standing back up, and today it is a much darker green. It's so cool to watch transformations like that!

Buttercrunch last week (before they wilted):


And Buttercrunch today (don't they look happier?):


Also, potatoes were planted, but I got those elsewhere because Lowes didn't have the type I wanted. I ended up getting small red potatoes that just went in the ground today, so no progress on those.

First prize for popping out of the ground first goes to:


And just in case you were curious:


I'm looking forward to watching everything grow this summer - more updates to come!