Update on the bell peppers...lemons and watermelon

Oh...those bell peppers seeds I planted on May 20th didn’t germinate!

This is not going to discourage me. I have a green bell pepper in the fridge. As soon as I use it to cook I'll save some seeds and try again.

Even though I was not that lucky with the green peppers, there have been other successful stories of some seeds that have sprouted.

I planted 2 lemon seeds on one pot I have on my kitchen window that has a lettuce plant and they have grown. In another pot that has a papaya sprout and a lettuce I placed a watermelon seed and it germinated too!!

I'll eventually have to transplant them to another pot or directly to the soil. I'll make a note here of when I do it.

Enjoy having more different types of fruits/veggies on your garden!

Problems with my tomato plants :(

Last week I saw one of my tomato plants had all the leaves on one of its stems gone and at the top of the plant one stem totally gone. I started to give the plant a closer look and while I was touching its leaves at the top I felt a worm! A green worm the exact same color of the leaf. I was devastated! I was trying to remove it from the leave. It was not an easy task, but I finally did it!That was my natural/green approach to remove it.

I have been keeping a close eye on my tomato plants and have not seen any more worms since last week incident. However, today I found that my tomato plants are showing a white powdery mildew on their leaves.

I started searching about it and found the following information: "Powdery mildew is a common fungal disease seen on tomato plants and other vegetables. It can occur anytime during the growing season and may rob tomato plants of vitality. According to the University of Connecticut, you can try to prevent this fungus by ensuring plants have good air circulation and avoiding feeding plants too much nitrogen. Even in these cases, your tomatoes may develop this disease, and you need to treat them."
Read more: How to Get Rid of White Powdery Mildew on My Tomato Plant Leaves |

Hope to get rid of this fungus soon... My plants haven't had any tomatoes yet and don't want them to die without giving me the satisfaction of at least one tomato for a fresh salad!

It is time for bell peppers

Today while cooking, bell pepper was one of the ingredients and of course I have to add it to my farm collection. I took the seeds and planted them. Now I just have to water them, wait and see.

I read a few hours ago that it was a good practice to keep a journal when gardening to know the best dates to start planting for the next year and I supposed it will be also good to know how long until seeds germinate. That is why I started to write this blog. I hope it will not only be helpful to me but also to anyone who reads it.

When you grow plants from seeds there is a satisfaction to see how plants can develop from them. I don't have babies. I guess growing plants is the closest to a mother instinct I would ever have. They are my little babies.

Enjoy your gardening experience!

What about lettuce?

I had a head of romaine lettuce and I cut the leaves for my salad and started to wonder if a lettuce plant could grow if I planted the bottom of the lettuce head.

There I was again on my yard, I got a pot, put some soil and placed the little piece of lettuce inside of it. I watered it for a few days and voilà leaves are now growing!! How amazing is that? You don't even need to buy seeds to grow your own plants to start your home farm. Just from the leftovers of the produce you regularly buy.

I recently planted other 3 pieces of lettuce head on the ground waiting to see if the grow too. I hope they do too!

So far I have papaya, tomato and lettuce growing. My husband told me we might not need to buy produce any longer if I continue doing this. We will hopefully be able to eat from our own yard.

Enjoy the wonders of nature!

Now...lets try with tomato seeds.

Few days after my experience with the papayas I was making a lettuce, cucumber and tomatoes salad. I was cutting the tomatoes on a cutting board and adding them to the salad bowl. There were few seeds left on the cutting board and I decided to give it a try to see if the tomato seeds could grow as the papaya seeds did.

No special seeds trays or potting soil. I just went to the yard and I planted the seeds in a specific area by the side of the house so I will know that if there were sprouts growing there they definitely were from the tomato seeds.

And they germinated too!! There were 14 little sprouts! They were too close to each other so I started very carefully transplanting them to give them a little space. I put them in another pot and placed it also on my kitchen window next to the pot with the papaya sprouts. I love to see new leaves growing and the plants being a few inches taller that they were the day before. They not only get plenty of sunlight by the window too and but since I keep an close eye on them they get enough water because I am sure of watering them when they look thirsty.

I have been transplanting them when they seem to need more space to spread their leaves. Of course now I cannot have all the pots in my kitchen, but I have them in areas I can still see them to make sure they are getting the needed sun and water.

I'm counting the days to prepare a salad with my home grown tomatoes.

Enjoy the fruits of your labor!

How did I start?

My house in South Florida has a medium-sized backyard with some landscaping, mostly of ornamental plants. I never imagined I was going to be growing any veggies or fruits plants. It all started with an attempt to do compost.

At the beginning of 2010 I bought a papaya and as we ate it, I was saving the peel and seeds in a container in the refrigerator to do a compost. Deep inside I think I was doing it in memory to my dad. He used to go thru the garbage at home to pull out anything that was organic waste to either give it as food to the turtles we had or open a hole in ground and bury them to enrich the soil. Once we finish eating the papaya, I grabbed my container from the fridge, opened a hole in the ground in a spot on the yard that needed some filling up and pour all the contents on it.

To my surprise in a few days (or perhaps weeks, I was not journaling the process) I saw lots of little sprouts in that same spot and I thought they had to be from the papaya seeds. I could not believe that plants could grow from those refrigerated seeds!

I got a digging tool and a pot and transplanted the sprouts. I smelled them. They smelled like papaya and confirmed my thoughts. I was amazed! I placed the pot on one of my kitchen windows in front of the sink so I could see them grow everyday in front of my eyes.

This was just the beginning to my little home farm.

Enjoy seeing your seeds grow!