Kirkpatrick Family Life: Fruit Trees and Veggies Oh My!!

When we bought this house right before Christmas last year, we knew it had pecan trees, scuppernong vines, and a kumquat tree. To our surprise, about 3 months ago, we realized we not only had those wonderful trees, but we also had 2 pear trees, several tall and very large blueberry bushes, and a peach tree! Lets just say we feel like we hit the jack pot!! I honestly have been overwhelmed with the amount of blueberries we have and have realized it's really hard keeping them picked! Trust me, pictures don't do the blueberry bushes justice! You would not believe how many there are! One Sunday night, my mom and dad plus John and I were all picking for about an hour or so and we still didn't get all the ripe ones picked! The bushes are so tall you have to have a ladder to get to the top! Our pear trees are not in the best of shape, but they are still bearing some pears this year. Sadly, the peach tree didn't bear any fruit this year. Not sure what happened, it looks like it tried and then just stopped. We were told that is once would bear tons of peaches, so maybe we can figure out the problem and help it along next year. After all it did flower this year and I saw lots of bees pollinating it!

At the beginning of May this year, we decided to plant a small garden in this flower bed that was already empty except for one tree. It was the perfect place since we didn't have to tear any of our yard up and it gets lots of sun! This is our second garden ever planted. Our first one we planted was when we lived in Tallahassee. It was a little bigger than this one, but we had to till up part of our back yard. Our tomato plants in Tallahassee were planted in pots instead of the ground and they didn't do so well, so I am hoping this years plants will do much better! Here is the link to the blog from our first garden we had in Tallahassee! http://www.kirkpatrickfamilylife.blogspot.com/2009/04/well-its-been-while-since-i-have.html and the other is http://www.kirkpatrickfamilylife.blogspot.com/2009/03/veggies-and-fruit-are-on-way.html

So after John tilled up the bed, we mixed in some cow manure and then started planting! We planted 5 tomato plants (4 different varieties, since the store was out of the one we really wanted), 6 squash plants (3 were store bought and 3 were seeds from John's nanny), Green Bell pepper plants, and some Okra that is a Kirkpatrick special seed from his Nanny. We have gotten a few squash already and have lots of green tomatoes on our tomato plants! The Okra was planted a little later due to having to soak the seeds, so they are smaller than everything else. It's been so fun to watch everything grow! Mallory has really enjoyed helping me water the plants every afternoon. Here are some pictures of all the fruits and veggies!

This is our Bell Pepper Plants. (note the lovely grass and weeds growing in our garden! This is all due to john being a tight wad and not letting me get any of the black tarp stuff or mulch! HA I told him he needed to get out there and pull it all up, but as you can see it still hasn't been done!)