Garden Time

Good Morning. I've been out at my garden this morning. I've got a few plants I'm worried about. Below is my Okra. It's not growing very well. Okra is one of my favorite foods, so I'm very disappointed that my plant isn't doing as well as I'd hoped.

 I'm also having problems with my crooked neck squash and zucchini.  So far this year I've had no female flowers.  Below is the male flower.  The female flower has a baby vegetable behind it.  Once the flower is fertillized, the squash starts growing. If it doesn't get fertilized, the squash and flower withers.  The female flower usually only blossoms for a day or so, where as the male will blossom for a few days.  So because I've had no female flowers, I have no squash. 

 Maybe, I'm praying, One of these blossoms below will be a female and I'll have squash soon.

 Here is my lettuce and spinach bed.  Makes for some delicious salads.

 I had been having the same problem with my cucumber plants (no female flowers) until a few days ago... when I got my first 3 female cucumber flowers.  Here's one...

 And here's another one.  I didn't leave the fertilizing up to nature either.  I hand pollinated all 3 of the female blossoms... But I can only find 2 now, and one isn't looking as good as the other.  I've got a couple more females that will open tomorrow or the next day, so hopefully I'll have a good amount of cucumber soon.

 My tomatoes are doing great though. And I LOVE TOMATOES! So I'm way happy for those to be coming in so well.

 Some of them are getting rather large now (size of a small roma tomato) but none are turning red yet... I can't wait for those tomatoes though.  I'm gonna eat em like apples as soon as they're ripe.

I've been so excited about my garden this year.  Until now, I've killed every plant I've ever had.  I've tried over and over to grow a small herb garden indoors.  Chris has bought me some plants. But I always kill them. I even started a much larger garden than what I've got now at the beginning of spring and killed just about all of it.  A couple flower plants was all that ended up growing out of that.  So I bought some starter plants to grow my vegetables, and those just kept on growing.  I admit there's been a couple times where I haven't watered them for a weekend or so, but I generally have remembered. And now I go out every morning to check on them.  I'm so excited to eat my first tomato and cucumber.  We've already had a salad from my lettuce and spinach and it was great.  I actually probably need to cut that today or tomorrow and stick it in the fridge so we can eat it. Anyways - I'm so excited to eat my veggies. And I can't wait til we have a house and I can grow a larger garden. Maybe next summer ;)