Please welcome our newest addition!

Oh, man! I cannot believe it--we have a SECOND tomato growing!! Sweet Baby T has a sister on the way!! Tammy is growing like a...well, like a tomato!!! :) We are so excited! Gardener Pup is excited too--or at least I think he is. He keeps licking the plants, so I think he's trying to show his love (or eat Tammy. uh oh!)

We have been doing pretty good with our Urban Garden. It's been fairly low maintenance.  We check on them a few times a day to make sure they are not drying out and if they are we water them.  This coming week we are putting our babies on actual food! Plants cannot live by water alone...or something like that.

The weather is really starting to get nice out here. Today's high is 65, which is so absolutely perfect out here that the plants should just LOVE it. I was thinking of going to the pool today...should I take Sweet Baby T and Tammy with me? Would that be weird? If you were laying on a pool chair and looked over to see a girl laying out with her potted plants would you think that was strange?? Probably...I guess I'll leave them at home with Mr. Sunshine to look after them on the balcony.

Anyway, here are the latest pictures:

 Sweet Baby T (Right) and Tammy (Left)

Anaheim Peppers starting to grow!

The cucumber plant has not been doing as good as these other two. We will see if it starts to respond to the FOOD we're going to feed it starting Monday.

Ok, that's all for this riveting episode of Watching Water Boil Plants Grow.

Signing Off,

Gardener Kirst

We have GROWTH!!

Gardener Jurle, here. It's my turn to post...so here I am. Hang in there--this is my first ever blog post.

So, this planting produce project has proven to be very stressful for me. I know the idea was to have fun with it and see what happens, but I have been so worried about our little plants! Since Monday (the day we started this journey) the sun has not come out even for a peep the entire time! Temperatures have dropped into the 40's and 50's the entire week and it's rained/hailed EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

I think this is a good place to stop and mention that several websites (including Wikipedia--the most reliable source on the planet) says that Colorado--Denver in particular--gets approximately 300+ days of sunshine a year. If I was visiting this week, I would have called Wikipedia a LIAR! I thought I had been transported to Seattle for a while. (or Forks, for any Vampire fans).

Today is the first day of sun since Monday. Gardener Kirst and I went out on the balcony to enjoy the 58º morning and a cup of coffee when GK decided to move the plants to the other side of the balcony where there was more direct sunlight.  That's when it happened. GK sat down on the balcony to look at the plants and WHAM! there she saw a little tomato growing!! it's so small and cute! It makes me want to rock it and feed it a bottle! It's so sweet!

So, we have our first little baby tomato! Here's some pictures of our progress:

HERE IT IS!! BABY T!

Where's Waldo Little T??? Can you find him?? 

And our chili peppers and cucumbers should be following along quite nicely.

Ok, that's all I have to report. I'm very excited and I hope y'all are too!

More reports later!
Gardener Jurle

The Beginning

Hello. Welcome (all one of you) to the exciting world of a couple buckets of plants on our balcony. We call it our Urban Garden.

My name is Gardener Kirst. My partner in "grime" will be Gardener Jurle. At any give time you might find an update from either one of us here.

How did all of this get started, you might ask...well. I'll tell you. Gardener Jurle's sister (we'll call her J.L. PrissyPants) was bragging telling us about some really good strawberries and tomatoes and jalapenos that she grew in her garden at home. She told Gardener Jurle that she was growing tomatoes in a planter (instead of her regular garden).  That gave Gardener Jurle an idea to try to grow some veggies here! Since we don't have a yard (apartments tend to not hand out backyards) we decided we'd just get big planter pots and just plant a few things. If those things live then we'll try more next year.

Honestly, neither Gardener Jurle nor myself have any sort of green tint to our thumbs, so we are just winging it! I'm going to explain what we did (don't get too excited...it's not a very complicated process) and then in the coming days, weeks, months, (or hours if we accidentally kill these plants!) we'll update and post about our progress.  So, if you are looking for some reading to help you fall asleep at night, please join us often...I'm sure there is nothing more exciting in your life than watching leaves grow.

Getting started: 5/16/11

Gardener Jurle and I just went to the local Wally-World and picked up two 12 inch plastic pots (JL PrissyPants said not to get terracotta because they hold in heat). We bought a large bag of soil and the plants. Oh, and one pair of $1.00 gardening gloves. The Gardening Gloves were essential for these reasons:

1. Dirt under and around the fingernails is not particularly what you want to see when I have said fingers coming towards patients' eyes all day long.
2. Gardening gloves make me feel official and powerful. Don't laugh...I bet they do for you too! Put on your gardening gloves and see if you don't feel like you can conquer the world!

OK...here's what it looked like:

All our supplies, stacked so neatly. This was before we made a royal mess.

These are our plants that we bought to start with (Tomatoes, Anaheim Peppers, and Cucumbers). 

The Royal Mess (as mentioned above).

The final product. Our little pots.

So, that's all she wrote for today. This is the beginning of what will hopefully be a "fruitful" relationship. (oh, come on--you knew I was going for that at some point, right??) hehehe

Ok, feel free to comment. :)

Signing Off,

Gardener Kirst.