...How does your garden grow?

So our little family decided to delve into the wonderful world of vegetable gardening this year. Neither Clayton or I had ever planted a garden so we really had no idea what we were doing. I did a little research about how to prep the horrible concrete-like soil we had in our yard and we planted a pretty good variety to see what happened. We waited and waited...nothing. We had created rows and planted in the high soil. We decided to do the opposite and plant in the "valleys" and within a few days we had little green leaves poking up out of the ground. The cantaloupe was the first to come up. We left for a two week vacation to Idaho the beginning of May just as everything was starting to come up. When we came home, the garden had exploded.

Now, our venture hasn't been filled with 100% success. We learned after it was too late, that we had planted about two months later than we should have. Because of that and the scorching heat we have in AZ in the summertime, the green beans plants and the peas look a little brown and our tomatoes pretty much bit the dirt. It didn't help the tomatoes to find two of these....

Behold the great Tomato Hornworm. This has got to be one of the nastiest things I've ever seen. When Clayton found it, he had to save it for me to see since I wasn't home. I found Clayton and Andrew sitting in the garage watching this little "caterpillar". I was physically getting ill watching it crawl around the floor of the garage. GROSS! And as a funny side note, Andrew thought this was the coolest "caterpillar" he'd ever seen. We had to tell him that we had to find the "caterpiller" a new home and I had to take him in the house while Daddy sent this thing to the tomato garden in the sky.

We have had some success though. Our carrots are looking good so far - tall lush tops. The green onions and yellow onions are looking good. We've eaten our first beet and are just waiting for them to get a little bigger. Our corn seems to be doing well. We're starting to get TONS of cucumbers. And our cantaloupe...our lovely cantaloupe. Neither of us had ANY idea how much space the plants take up. They've overtaken a huge part of our garden, but we are getting a lot of fruit. So we feel like we haven't done a horrible job with our first attempt at a veggie garden. Next year will be even better since we have learned a lot about gardening...especially in Arizona!