Gardening in Southwest Florida

Hi,

I have started following a lot of blogs recently and find myself wishing that I had a blog to post to. Because of this, I have created, "Amanda All Day". I suppose it is because I don't want to focus only on gardening, or shopping, or funny videos I find, or even things that I create (or destroy) in the kitchen. So... It's Amanda All Day... a little bit of everything that I do. And I hope you enjoy it as much as I will enjoy posting about it.

So I'm becoming very brave. I'm trying out a little garden in Southwest Florida. I am not a gardener, and in fact refer to myself as having a "black thumb".
Despite this, like I said, I am brave.
Here are some pictures of my garden so far (I am very pleased with myself!)

First up is my baby watermelons. I planted these from seeds in late May/early June. So far my biggest watermelon is about 1/2 inch. I've got two that have been pollinated and are growing and I've got a third that will open up any day or two for pollination.

 Isn't it cute?!

This is another picture of a baby watermelon, but it ended up being kind of fuzzy. 



Here is a picture of a baby green bell pepper that is growing (I'm really excited about these because if you look in the second picture, it looks like I will have between 4-5 bell peppers on the same plant! 

Here are my Raspberries:

I've got no flowers but it looks to be a healthy green color, so I'm currently pleased with it.

Here are my Blackberries:
That I'm pleased to say, are flowering! I just hope that I can keep the darn birds away from the berries long enough that I can try one. :)

Here are my Green Beans, which are growing very slowly. I'm wondering if I planted them too close together. They sprouted very quickly but this is all that they've done in a month. For a vine, I think something must be wrong with them. We shall see!

Here are my strawberries, of which I have two small berries growing! I've got two plants, but this is the only one with anything on it as of yet. 

And finally, my Cherry Tomato plant. As you can see, the bottom was entirely picked off. This is from the wonderful Grackle birds that dive bomb it. I put the wire support around it this evening, so I hope it makes a difference and the little sucker can have a fighting chance.

As you can see in my pictures, I have baited for slugs and fertilized this evening. There is a big rain coming through right now so I'm hoping I took advantage of a good time to do this.

Until next time!

Amanda