The Gardening Gilberts

Several months ago, Marty decided that he'd like to try his hand at growing some tomatoes. I'm sure you've seen the ads for the "Topsy Turvy" Tomato Planter (it hangs from a hook and grows tomatoes upside down). A friend told us about a way he'd figured out to make his own upside down tomato grower out of a 2-liter bottle. Figuring we had nothing to lose, we gathered our supplies, and got started. And this is how it turned out...


It's certainly not the most beautiful contraption of all time, but it seems to be working! It's grown quite a bit since this picture was taken and is finally starting to get some little tomatoes on it! We've got 3 plants like this, so we'll hopefully be making some homemade salsa before long!

Soon after the tomato plants started proving to be a success, Marty decided that we might as well try our hand at gardening as well! So, after several trips to Wal-Mart and Lowe's for soil and supplies and seeds, we set out on this new adventure.

First, Marty made a basic box of out 2x4s. Then, we cut out a patch of landscape fabric and used stakes to secure the box to the ground.


Next, we filled the box with a whole lotta soil...we used Black Kow, which is basically just composted manure, for more organic vegetables.

We had started the germination process for several seeds and decided to plant some sprouts as well as some seeds to see what happened.


We planted Zucchini, Yellow Squash, Cantaloupe, Cucumbers, Cilantro, Green Peppers, Hot Peppers, Broccoli, Green Onions and Lettuce.

And just a few months later, here's what we've got!

The squash and zucchini plants have taken over completely!! We ended up having to uproot several plants of squash, zucchini, cucumbers and cantaloupe because their leaves or vines were keeping other things from growing.

And here is our first little bit of harvested homegrown veggies!!


So far, we've collected plenty of squash, zucchini and cucumbers. The broccoli didn't come up at all. We had one green pepper plant come up, but no peppers produced from it yet. The lettuce is finally starting to come up (after several tries), but probably won't grow enough for us to use. And the green onions seem to be growing, but not fast enough. We tried to do a little container garden with cilantro and some hot peppers, but that bombed as well. Our cantaloupe plant finally has a little melon on it, so we'll hopefully be able to get something there!

It's been so much fun to pick fresh vegetables to cook for dinner. For a little money and just a little time each day, we've been able to stock our freezer to the point where it is overflowing with the crops our little garden has produced!