Weed Eater Accident, Lettuce, and Fruitful Surprises

Today was certainly an exciting day in my garden. Even the cloudy day didn't dampen my mood. It was mostly good news... Unfortunately, my large and beautiful stevia plant is no longer. This is all that's left in the pot.


Now let me tell you the reason. Cam was weed eating the grass around the front vegetable bed, and the extension cord on the electric weed eater knocked the pot over and snapped the plant in two. We think the small plant that's left is another stevia plant, so we're going to continue to care for it and see what happens.


In the mean time, Cam and I are going to try to dry these leaves and turn them into a powder for sweetening. We still need to learn how to do this, but it'll be a fun experiment.

As for the plant, Cam picked off most of the stevia leaves to dry. He dunked the stem in water to see if it will sprout new roots. We tried this on a tomato stem, and it worked. And hopefully the stevia plant will sprout as well.

Onto happier news. I decided to "harvest" our largest lettuce head. It hadn't turned into a head yet, but it was large enough and I was getting impatient. (Cam says "you and patience are not friends." LoL. I am impatient). Well, we also have two other lettuce heads that are growing at a brisk pace, and we can't eat all of them at once.

Here are some pictures of the "harvest."

Picture 1: Getting ready to cut.
Picture 2: Separation
Picture 3: The happy gardener





And to think, this lettuce was a small seedling only a month ago. Here is its "baby" picture. Time sure flies. First, you're raising a cute, little baby, and the next thing you know, they've graduated and end up in your tummy.


Now onto more talk of my impatience. I found one red and one pink strawberry today from the strawberry plant that I put in the SFG box # 2.


It was only yesterday that it was barely showing any color. And today, it was red and delicious. Cam told me to wait to see if the strawberry would get bigger in size, but I couldn't wait. I compromised and told him that I'd wait for the other strawberry to get bigger.

Note: the strawberry looks much bigger than it actually is. My hand is tiny! Don't believe me? Here's a picture of my small hand in Cam's palm.


Below: picture of the strawberry pickin'



In other fruit news, my concord grape vine is finally producing hope of grapes. There are only two grape bunches, but I think the grapes are starting to come in. I can't wait until they get bigger and I can chomp down!




And in other berry news: my boysenberry bush is producing colorful fruit. We've had the bush for 3 weeks, and it's only fruited green berries so far. But today, I noticed some of the berries are ripening! I'm so excited. I can't wait to eat them. I think they end up being a very dark maroon when they are ripe. I want to eat them before the birds take a nibble!



By the way, does anyone know how to prune boysenberries? I've just let it grow out so far, and it seems to be doing well, but maybe I need to prune it.

Lost tomatoes & Potting new plants

Remember the rain yesterday? Well, it came with lots of wind. *sighs* and the saddest thing of all: two baby grape tomatoes were blown off the plant. They are still green, but they're two grape tomatoes that I won't get to eat. :-(




I know that it's probably a silly thought, but to see those two tomatoes lie on the cold ground... it was just so sad! I know my tomato plant continue to fruit. Here's a photo of the plant after the windy weather.



Cam and I have six tomato plants: one grape tomato, three cherry tomatoes, and two of the regular size tomatoes (Celebrity and Bonnie Original). Since I was in charge of choosing the tomato varieties, I'm the one to blame for the fact that we have more smaller sized tomatoes than regular ones. I'm going to try to convince him to let me buy one more regular sized tomato plant. An heirloom would be a nice addition.

Seven tomato plants isn't that bad at all. My exterminator told me he has 30 of them. He plans to can for the winter. That's a nifty idea. Reminds me of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie books. (I'm 23, but for some reason, I still love reading children's books. Probably because I want to become a published children's author one day).

Now onto a unrelated SFG topic. Since Cam and I are out of room in our square foot garden, I decided to pot a few plants.

I read that peppermint is a natural bug deterrent. The smell is too strong for them. I read in an article that if you plant peppermint in your garden, nasty bugs will stay away. But the roots of the peppermint plant can go crazy and spread like wildfire. So this is the reason I've decided to pot this.


We bought the peppermint a few weeks ago, but I just never got around to potting it. I've never potted anything before, so we chose to use the Miracle Gro Organic Choice Potting Mix. I have no idea how effective it is, but it's worth a shot.




Below: A picture of the peppermint after it was potted. I might cut a few sprigs off and dry some of the leaves.


We also potted a stevia plant. Cam really loves stevia. For anyone who has no clue what stevia is: Stevia is a natural sweetener. Its is 300 times sweeter than sugar. It's widely used in Japan as a sugar substitute. I believe it's 40-50 percent of the sweetener market over there, but I don't know the exact number. You can buy stevia extract at health stores in the US. It's normally in the dietary supplement aisles by the vitamins.

I'm not a huge fan of it because I love sugar too much. But it is definitely better for than all the artificial sweeteners out there.

Below: the potted Stevia plant.


Finally: another picture of the potted strawberry plant.