Gardening Update With an Anole

I just wanted to give you a quick update on our rapidly growing garden. So here goes…

I finally received my 100 one gallon nursery pots, so I have been transplanting all the little baby plants, such as carrots, cucumbers, peas, peppers and tomatoes into various containers. The tomatoes were mostly split up as best I could and put into the larger pots, while everything else was placed into the one and two gallon ones. During my last visit to Lowe’s, I was able to sweet talk my way to 10 free containers. I think they give them away, but you do have to ask – which I did – and I received. What a lucky find.

We still have some spinach mustard and carrots inside waiting to grow just a bit more. They’re too fragile for the full sun right now. In about a week, I’ll put them out with the rest.

I ordered another fig tree and planted it yesterday. It’s doing well. When I received it in the mail, it was bent and facing down. Now, it’s facing the sun and looking pretty good. This one is a “Hirt’s Hardy Chicago Edible Fig Plant.” I got it from Amazon.

I am now officially growing papaya seedlings. After about two weeks, they started peeking through the soil en masse. When I took the photos below, there were only a few, but today, I have about twenty. It’s nuts. I’m going to have to put them in their own containers by the end of the week, which means I’ll have to pick up a few more bags of dirt.

The beans are growing about an inch per day. I’ve never seen anything grow that fast. It’s like once they get their leaves and can absorb the sun, they take off.

Our strawberry plants are starting to flower, but Laura is picking them off for the first year. If you remove the flowers early on, the plant will do better later. Something about giving different parts of the plant the nutrients they need. I have no idea.

The fig tree we’ve been growing for a while is spouting new growth all over it. The buds that were once there are now turning into leaves and new buds are pushing out of the stems. I never knew fig trees were this hearty. And if things go well with our clipping, we should soon have eight trees in all. I’m excited about that.

Lastly, our mulberry tree is growing nicely as well. I’ll include a picture of it below. It’s got new buds that are turning into leaves. And it has nice color. It’s the sun and the heat – I’m telling ya.

As I was outside this afternoon taking pictures, I noticed an anole posing for me on my papaya tree. It was just chilling out, hanging onto a branch. I had to run back inside to grab my camera. I was pretty confident he wasn’t going to leave, since I see him running around just about every time I go out there. Sometimes, he hops from pot to pot, doing who knows what. I have to find a name for him, other than George. I name everything George.

Okay, onto those pictures.