Lettuce and Strawberries

Thank you to everyone who commented yesterday about the mushrooms. The advice was very helpful. I dug up the mushrooms to see what the soil underneath them looked like, and this is what I found:



Directly underneath the mushrooms, I found an ash-gray color in the dirt. I dug up the dirt where the mushrooms had not appeared, and that soil looked dark brown and moist. So I took it as a sign that those areas are safe from mushroom infestation. I'll keep my eyes open for additional mushrooms.

In the front yard, we didn't do the traditional SFG. We used the dirt that was there and added organic top soil to it. We should have probably done something else to the dirt, but we are beginners. Next year, I will probably need to figure out how to keep that area healthier. The front vegetable bed is also shaded for several hours in the afternoon, so this may have something to do with the mushrooms.

So far, the lettuce in the front is doing much better than the lettuce in the back. Here's a wide view of the front vegetable bed.


Above: We used to have spinach, but we didn't pick the spinach leaves until it was too late. The spinach plants had started to flower, and when it flowers, the plant basically dies for the season. Maybe next year we'll have better luck.

Below: More close-up pictures of our lettuce heads. They haven't formed into heads yet, and I wonder if they ever will. They are getting pretty large.


On another topic, Cam and I went to a nursery yesterday and found two everbearing strawberry plants. They were on sale, and one of the plants already had 2 strawberry fruit on it. I decided to do an experiment. I potted one of the strawberry plants (the one without the fruit), and I planted the one with fruit in the SFG box in the back. I'm going to monitor how each one does over the course of the summer.

Below: potted strawberry plant


Below: strawberry plant in SFG Box # 2. This was taken yesterday after it stopped raining.


I'd love to have tons of strawberries, but the season for strawberries (well, the June-bearing variety) is coming to a close. May is strawberry season, I believe. But we'll see. It'll be a fun and delicious (I hope) experiment.

Above: the strawberry plant today. You can tell one of the strawberries is gaining more color.

Does anyone have experience with growing strawberries? If so, I'd love to hear your tales.

Ek! Mushrooms

It's a rainy and icky day in Nashville. Every time I want to go out and check on my vegetables, the rain pours. But I was able to go to the front vegetable bed this morning. I was shocked to find disgusting mushrooms growing near my lettuce heads. It is closest to the smallest lettuce head. I'm thinking I'll need to pull out the mushrooms when it stops raining.





I planted onions a few weeks ago in the front vegetable bed. About a week after that, I noticed small mushrooms (similar to the above) were beginning to form. I pulled them out and threw them into the grass. But this is the first large patch of mushrooms I've seen. Hopefully this will be the last.

I wonder if these mushrooms will make my lettuce heads poisonous to eat. Aren't most mushrooms dangerous to eat?

Concord Grapes

When Cam and I bought our two grape plants last month, they looked dead. They were both on sale, but we didn't have much hope for them. They looked like sticks in a pot. We took a chance, and we planted them. Amazingly, they started to flourish within a few weeks. The below picture is of our grape plants 2 weeks after they were transplanted.



The right plant looks much healthier than the left with its beautiful green leaves. You can tell the left plant was starting to form leaves. (Bottom center of the photo: there's something green that's growing near the grape plant. We didn't know what it was, and we were afraid to uproot it. Does anyone know what this is? Is it a weed that we need to get rid of?)



In the above picture, the right grape plant continues to grow at a steady pace, and the left one is beginning to catch up.

Above: Our grape plants today. You can't even tell where one plant starts and another ends. Their leaves have overlapped beautifully. Unfortunately, there are no grapes yet.

Below: In the middle of the photo, we think that is going to grow into a grape bunch, but it's growing so slowly that we're beginning to get concerned. Does anyone know how long it takes before the grape bunches to start form?


The leaves on the grape plants are still climbing grape trellis, but only the left plant (the one that grew very slowly in the beginning) has started to form the grape bunches. I'm not sure if I need to be concerned yet, but I think I'll need to do more research. I really would love a productive plant.

In Vietnam (where I was born), my parents made and sold grape wine. I'm hoping that if these grape plants are successful, I can learn the trade and make my own grape wine. Not for commercial use, but it might just be something fun to learn to do.

Front Yard

In the front yard, Cam's late mother had built a beautiful brick flower bed. We decided we would use it to plant additional vegetables.
In the beginning, we planted spinach, lettuce heads, and a bell pepper plant.
You can see the baby lettuce heads at the top of the photo, and the spinach at the bottom. The sole bell pepper plant is left of the lettuce head, but the sunlight makes it hard to see it. Here are a few close-ups of the plants.


Above: the lone bell pepper plant. Cute, isn't it?


Baby lettuce heads. They look messy and limp...Spinach after it was transplanted.

My SFG Garden Beginnings (Back Yard)

In April of this year, my boyfriend, Cam, and I decided to start a square foot garden together. I had just gotten laid off from my publishing job (The economy, structural changes, etc.), and I was about to start freelancing writing and editing full-time. I was coming over to Cam's house more often, and it seemed to be the perfect time.

We had talked about starting a square foot garden in the winter. We're both into eating more organic foods and enjoying what God has blessed us with. (We're Christians, by the way). A SFG seemed to be a perfect fit for us. Cam lives in a subdivision, so we don't have acres of land to work with. A SFG was the most convenient in terms of space.

So in the middle of April, Cam went to Lowe's and purchased untreated wood boards to build the square foot garden boxes. He built three in total. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photographs while he was building it, but here's a photo of me standing in front of one of them. (This was at the beginning stages of our garden. Only one SFG box was in use at this time.)


After Cam finished building the boxes, he and I went to Lowe's and Home Depot to buy small plants and seeds. We wanted a vegetable garden, and it was definitely a challenge to find a variety of vegetables. It seemed that all the lawn and garden stores had rows and rows of tomatoes, but not much else. But eventually we were able to get the variety we wanted.



We started with concord gapes and a few tomato plants. Then we moved onto lettuce, carrots, onions, bell peppers, oregano, zucchini, watermelon, lettuce.