How does your garden grow?

Well, it is official! Our garden is taking off! This morning, Matt checked on it and said, "You better go check your garden. There's sprouts!" I didn't expect anything to sprout so quickly, not for a few more days. That's only 4 days to sprout! (It should take about 7-14 for most of the veggies I'm growing.) So, without further ado, here are my newly sprouted veggies:

Radishes

Radishes

Lettuce

Broccoli

Turnips

And Matt's Poppies!

Isn't it amazing how similar the sprouts look? :-}

We're still waiting patiently for: Onions, Cabbage, Swiss Chard, Carrots (which will take a while), and Peas. I have a couple Marigolds peaking up, but I couldn't get a decent picture of them. This whole drip irrigation thing is awesome. Once the seeds sprout, I pretty much just turn the water on, set a timer, and come back to turn it off. I'm also really impressed with Mel's Mix. It is holding the water perfectly. I was a little bit leery, since we bought it premixed from Lowe's, but so far so good. I mean, we're getting sprouts 2-3 days earlier than I expected! Now, if we can only keep the critters away...we have something that is liking to dig in the garden. So far it is digging in the squares that have no plants, but I'm not sure how long that will last. We put a mixture of chili powder and dried cow's blood around and on top of the garden, and that seems to have kept the digging to a minimum. And we also did our "hang the cd's" trick to keep the birds and squirrels away. We tried this in Virginia on our garden last year and it worked wonders. We simply tied old CD's together in a line, and hung them up so they sway in the breeze. The flashing seems to keep the birds and squirrels away, at least when it is sunny and breezy. :)

Well, that's about it. My test is tomorrow, and I'm pretty nervous.

I'll leave you with this: 

 The start of my fall centerpiece :)