Garden Update and Tomato Planting Tip

It's the end of April and our little garden is doing well for this time of year.

Exactly a month ago my little garden was starting to sprout, here is one of my first spinach sprouts.

And here they are a month later! Things were going great until some little critter decided to eat holes in all of the leaves! We think we know what happened, we had a guest dog visiting us for a week while her mommy and daddy were out of town and she was very good at scaring all the little birdies. Well the birdies are very important in the garden because they help eat the caterpillars! I never did find any culprits in the garden but as a preventative measure I started putting out crushed up egg shells around my plants. That combined with the doggie going home seems to have resolved the problem, now my plans just have to grow some more! 

The caterpillars got my green beans too, but they are starting to recover! 

Happily my mint was unaffected and is thriving! 

My sun loving plants are doing well too. I love when my aloe blooms! 

Now on to my tomato planting tip that I want to share with you! This is not my original idea, I learned this one from the pros! At Ben's school the horticultural department was having a tomato plant sale. We stopped by and picked up two beautiful little plants. As we were leaving one of the professors shared some great knowledge with us! He said when we go to plant them make sure to bury the stem all the way up to the top area of leaves. Yes that means burying lower branches with the leaves on and all! Don't break or cut off any of the branches, that will cause open wounds on the plant. The plants look kinda funny when you're done but let me tell you they instantly took off! 

Here they are just two weeks later.

And one month after being planted they were in need of cages! 

By the way check out our tomato cages! We saw them in a friend's backyard last summer and fell in love! These plant stakes by Gtieda are sturdy and easily adjustable as the plant grows. We love how the green color helps them to disappear and let the plants be more visible. They worked out great for us last year and were is so easy to store away because they disassemble so easily. They are still in great shape after a long summer in the sun and ready for another round!

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