A little Arizona garden...look quick, the heat is coming!

So several weeks ago we put in some grow boxes and decided to see if we could get a garden going. We have been lucky as the weather has been good to us for the most part.

I realized we haven't taken any pictures of the process yet and thought this might be as good as it gets!

Here is what we planted.

Three different kinds of tomatoes. The roma are growing the best although the others seem to be coming on now. They all have some tomatoes on them. I think the roma has like 8 and the other two have two each.

We also planted Adam's soy bean plants he brought from school. Those are really interesting. One's leaves were eaten off and we thought it was dead but it started sprouting new little leaves. Then one day we noticed they were gone! But several days later another new set came out. This happened about four times and now the little stump has withered at the top. But not after giving its all! The other two bean plants are almost identical but one is twice as large as the other. I'm sure our soil is not that great and maybe it got in bad soil.

With the beans we have a strawberry which is healthy but not putting on any fruit after the first ones got eaten by birds. But it is still growing new leaves so we are patient with it.

We also had a green pepper plant. Its leaves were really being mangled. It seems something likes the new green leaves. I manhandled it a couple of times squishing what I think were aphids (the ants love being on it). Now it is much happier and there are not more ants around. (they are all on the soy beans now!)

We also planted a cantelope and watermelon in the boxes at the back by the fence. They had a rough time going. The cantelope seems to be doing better. The watermelon is like a minature little thing with tiny leaves. It is just about ready to sprawl.

We also planted sunflowers across the north end. I was always amazed at how tall they got. These can reach 12 feet with up to a 14 inch diameter head. I thought the kids would love them and I knew they would grow even if everything else died. We planted these by seed and it was fun to see them break through the ground. They are now taller and thicker than anything but the tomatoes and they are just about to pass them up now.

We have another grow box outside our bedroom window. This gets more direct sun for longer so we planted a cantelope and watermelon along with several sunflowers. This got started at least a week later than the other ones but it is really coming on now. The cantelope is much bigger than its sister plant and it looks like it has set maybe two cantelopes. The Watermellon is going nuts and covering the whole area. I think each of its tendrils is growing about 3 inches a day! No watermelons on it yet. The sunflowers are going pretty well here too.

Anyway, that is the update so far. Hopefully we remember to take pictures later to compare. Mike encouraged us to learn about faith by working with our garden. We have learned a lot.

I love how I see the kids go out there a couple of times during the day to look over the garden, pull a few weeds and see who can be the first to spot the new things. Their friends also go out there and they walk around and inspect things. Should have done this years ago!

We'll see what survives the brutal summer temperatures. The engineer in me wants to put a mister and screen over the tomatoes so I can lower the overall temperature and increase the humidity a bit to keep setting tomatoes. We'll see. I don't like tomatoes but my sweetie does!

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