This week was our last time in the garden. We were to clean up all the materials we used throughout the semester and take home any plants that we wanted to keep.

I didn't have very many stakes, so those were easy to clean up and put back. As for my plants, I moved them to the horticultural sciences garden to keep for a little longer. I hope to continue caring for them until the produce fruits, as many of my plants were very close.

I harvested a lot of vegetables, and I'm excited for them to fully ripen. I have a good amount of cherry tomatoes, some of which are ripe already. I harvested a radish and a jalapeño as well, and some peas. Overall, I'd say I had a good harvest.

This class has been one of the best experiences I've had, and I'm very glad I took it. I've found a real passion through this and I've learned a lot about gardening in the process. I look forward to the years ahead of me as I proceed through my new major, horticultural science.

As the semester comes to a close, I would like to take some time to reflect on my garden and my plans for future gardening. I think my garden did very well given the circumstances. While most of my plants were late to bloom such that I am just now beginning to have fruits, they were growing steadily the entire time. I'm happy with how this process went. As you can see in the pictures, my peppers really started fruiting recently. I have both a sizeable bell pepper and jalapeño. My tomato also started flowering, which is exciting because that means it might produce tomatoes before winter really starts to get cold. Other than that, the rest is as usual. I harvested a radish and I have a carrot still growing that I will probably need to take home to continue growing until it is big enough to eat. My beans are steadily producing small amounts of beans every week. Looking forward, I intend to keep most if not all of my plants if possible. I will most likely keep them outdoors in the horticultural science club's garden if they are currently fruiting or flowering so they can continue that process, because if they came home with me they would not be outdoors, and as such any remaining flowers would not be pollinated. Anything that does not have flowers can come home with me directly, probably in bags until I can pot them. I'm looking forward to seeing how they grow from this point on, and I'm grateful for all I've learned in this class.

This week we learned about pollination. We learned how to hand pollinate flowers with several methods, and practiced with one method in the field. We were to pull the oldest flower off one of our plants that had several flowers and use it to fertilize the other flowers. None of my plants had enough flowers to practice this with, so I practiced by using the flower from a wildflower growing in the area. It was a great learning experience, as I've always wanted to see how people hand-fertilize flowers. Other than that, my garden was growing as usual. My tomato plant finally started flowering, and my zinnia is in full bloom and growing more blooms. My carrot is growing even more than expected, and I think it might be ready to harvest before the semester is over. My pepper plants are growing steadily, and continuing to bloom. My beans and peas are steadily producing, and I've been harvesting them as they come. My lettuce is flowering as well, which I find very interesting actually. I think it's fun to see how lettuce reproduces, and I might try to save some seeds if I can from it. As far as harvests, like I said, I've been harvesting beans as they're ready. I also harvested a radish. That is all, however, as many of my plants are rather behind for the growing season. I'm not expecting much of a harvest out of several of my plants. For example, my tomato is certainly not going to produce anything in time. It has just begun blooming, so there's no way they'll be ready in time. The peppers are also unlikely to produce a harvest, as they are just now beginning to bloom; however, I may be able to get a jalapeño, since they seem to mature fairly quick. Other than that, it seems all I'll be harvesting are raddishes and a carrot. I'm still excited to see how everything is growing, whether or not I expect a harvest. I enjoy watching them grow regardless.

This week in the garden we did maintenance as usual, and also we made a natural, organic pest deterrent. This pest deterrent consisted of 1 teaspoon of dish soap, 1 teaspoon of Cayenne, and 1 liter of water. We sprayed this all over any plants that were experiencing pest issues, which in my case were primarily the beans. We'll see in the following week how well this worked.

Overall this week in the garden I was pleased with the growth I saw, as several of my plants finally began to flower. The eggplant is flowering, both the peppers are flowering and also looking much healthier, and the tomato is growing noticeably. All of the beans are producing flowers and beans on a regular basis now, and the radishes are finally developing. The zinnia is flowering, and it turns out that it's a pink color. Also, my lettuce is vaulting finally (most of the lettuce had been vaulting by now). Overall, a lot of very interesting and exciting new growth occurred this week. I think all these flowers make for wonderful photo opportunities as I photograph my garden each week, so even if it’s unlikely I’ll be able to harvest many of these crops, I’m still enjoying the beauty of it all.

I can't wait to see what happens next, as it seems most of my plants are entering a new stage of life.

This week in the garden, our task was fairly simple. We were to ensure everything looked good with regards to weeding, watering, and fertilizing, and harvest any vegetables that may be ready. None of my vegetables were quite ready this week, so I did not get a harvest; however, my garden is doing much better now than it used to. The tomato and peppers are the ones that show the most improvement, and I think it is primarily due to regular fertilizer and pinching them. I’m excited to see how they are doing this coming week, maybe they will flower soon (the bell pepper plant is already about to flower, pictured above).

As for my other plants, the beans are all flowering (in response to the damage they received from insects, I believe), but nonetheless, they’re flowering so I’m excited to get some beans out of those soon. The ladybugs we released this week should help with the bug problems, and hopefully will allow my beans to return to their usual growth. One of them already has a sizeable bean, pictured above. Also this week, I discovered a carrot growing in the middle of my plot, so I moved it to an open space where it can thrive. My zinnia is also about to flower, and I’m excited to see what color it is.

Overall it was a pretty relaxed week, and my plants are doing well. I hope they’re doing even better this coming week.

This week in the garden we learned about pruning and training. This is a topic that I've been wanting to learn about for years because it always confused me how plants react to different types of pruning. Pruning can be done in two main was. One way is to pinch the apical bud off of a plant, which will result in the activation of the other buds such that the plant branches outwards. This is helpful if you want more branches to produce more fruits, or if you simply desire a wider shape for the plant. The other main way is to prune dead plant matter from the plant (leaves, branches, etc). This helps to keep the plant at peak functionality and also to prevent disease. This week I pinched my tomato and my peppers to try to maximize the harvest out of them. I also pruned the jalapeños off the jalapeño plant, because it was dying trying to produce it, and it was stressing the plant severely. I also pruned the dead leaves off of all of my plants, but most notably my beans that had bug damage from the caterpillars. The lowermost leaves were mostly dead and some other leaves were dying, so I pruned the leaves rather heavily. With respect to training, I didn't need to do much. My garden has very few plants that need training and the ones that do already had stakes. In the future, I will need to stake my beans, but this week they were small seedlings so I left them for next week when they are larger. Hopefully my actions will prove successful next week.

My garden is really taking shape now. One thing that I noticed this week was the presence of worms on my bean plants. I’m not sure what type of worm they were, but you can see the leaf damage in the 4th image attached. What they did was bite off a bit of leaf and hold it over themselves. I’ve seen these bugs before on my peach tree back at home, but there was only one worm so it wasn’t a problem. With my bean plants this week, there were at least 5 worms per plant, so I had to do something. I didn’t want to kill them so I just gently removed them and took them somewhere else.

Otherwise, everything else is growing as usual. The eggplant grew a new leaf, and my jalapeño is still growing the same two peppers. I also got a few new sprouts this week as pictured. I got a few radishes and zinnias, as pictured in the 8th, 9th, and 10th picture.

I transplanted my squash this week as well, but it didn’t take the transplant very well. Even though I didn’t tamper with the root system at all, the squash immediately started wilting just minutes after I transplanted it. On the other hand, the tomatillo looked fine when I transplanted it so hopefully it will be fine next week.

I find it funny to compare the growth of the plants in my garden to the plants that I took home from the garden. I planted some bean seeds at home of the same type in the garden, and the ones at home are already several feet tall, climbing a rather large stick, whereas the plants that are a week older in my garden are maybe 6 inches tall, and appear stunted. My tomato and jalapeño at home are comparable to the ones in my garden, so it seems that the conditions outside are fine for these plants. It’s most obvious with the beans that the conditions outside are not favorable for optimal growth.

Hopefully next week everything will be going smoothly, and perhaps my squash will have survived.

This week we fertilized our gardens with organic fertilizer, and put hay down everywhere that there aren’t plants in order to keep weeds down and hold water in the soil better. To my surprise, I was told to use only 30 to 40 grams of fertilizer for my entire plot of land. I have rarely used fertilizer before, so I was expecting to use it like we did the compost, where it seemed like the more we added, the better. I learned about how if you use too much fertilizer, especially on young plants, they can experience “leaf burn.” I had never heard of this before, but essentially if you use too much fertilizer, the plant will start to wilt, yellow, and potentially drop leaves entirely. My instinct was to think, “why are we using fertilizer now, while our plants are young and at more risk, if we could simply wait and do it when they are stronger?”

For example, I have several plants back at home in Jacksonville. I used organic fertilizer very similar to the one we used in class just prior to leaving for Gainesville because the plants were doing poorly and I could tell they needed a boost. I put it on like compost, though, in a thick later on top of the soil in each pot, because it made sense to me to treat it like compost. I’m not entirely sure why my plants did not experience leaf burn, but I’m thinking it might be because they are more mature plants. One of them is a 1 year old peach tree in a pot, and the other is an orange tree of about the same age, both of which I started from seed (they’re not large, but they’re certainly settled into their pots).

Overall, I learned that what I did back at home was a risky decision, and it could have very well killed my plants had they been younger. So I took caution with how I applied the fertilizer to my garden this time, and I hope it paid off.

This week was unique in that hurricane Irma threw the weather pattern off such that we were in a minor drought. This caused a few problems since all of the plants are young and recently transplanted. The lettuce sustained the most damage because it is a very drought-sensitive plant. In my garden, the only plant I had to replace was the lettuce; the rest of the plants were fine with just the water from the sprinkler system that runs in the mornings. Pictured here is the red variety that I replaced my romaine lettuce with.

This week the main task was to tie the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants to a stake in order to train it’s growth. I tied up 4 plants in total: my tomato, eggplant, green bell pepper, and jalapeño pepper. Each plant received two ties for stability and guidance.

The more exciting changes noticeable this week were that some of the seeds began to sprout (despite there being a small drought, the sprinkler system provided enough water to germinate some of them). The most obvious were the beans, because they had grown to a considerable size (seen pictured here). The other sprouts were very tiny, so I didn’t photograph them yet.

This week other than that was fairly normal. We pulled weeds and did regular maintenance. For next week, I’m excited to see if more of my seeds sprouted.

So I’ve now planted my garden. All in all, I have 5 transplants and around 6 seed plants (with several seeds per spot, to help ensure germination) in the ground. I am beyond excited to see how these plants are doing. Also worth noting: I have a couple of seedlings (a squash and a tomatillo) at home that I plan on planting in the garden as soon as they’re big enough. The squash takes 45 days to harvest so there should be enough time for that to harvest before it starts getting colder outside. As far as the tomatillos, I don’t necessarily expect a harvest because they are a spring crop and they take 65 days, so there’s a good chance it will be cold by the time they’re flowering and fruiting if they get that far. It’s not important to me that I get a harvest, so I’m content with just watching them grow to whatever size they reach.

Of the plants that are in my garden right now, I have 5 transplants: a beefsteak tomato, an eggplant, a jalapeño, romaine lettuce, and a green bell pepper. The seeds I planted are snap beans, carrots, radishes, sunflowers, stevia, and zinnia. These should all be ready to harvest before the end of the semester. One interesting note is that the jalapeño transplants are already flowering (the flowers are pictured here). I’m excited to see those start producing fruits so soon.

Overall, I’m excited to see how these plants grow throughout the semester.

I have officially selected my 6' by 6' plot of land on which I will grow my vegetables; I am beyond excited. Did you know that there are male and female parts of a flower? Not all flowers are the same, and that amazes me. Until now I assumed that all flowers were identical to each other. Also, did you know that broccoli is actually the flower of the plant from which it's taken? There is so much about plants, specifically the vegetables that I'll be growing soon, that I have yet to learn. My current plan is to grow as much variety as I can, but also as much of what I enjoy eating as I can. My current ideas involve squash, okra, tomatoes, beans of some sort, carrots, and maybe a pepper plant. I'm considering growing broccoli, despite the fact that I don't like how broccoli tastes, solely so I can see what the plant that it comes from looks like. It really surprised me to hear that broccoli was a flower, and I wondered what it would look like if we didn't eat it before it matures, if we let it flower to it's fullest. I'm considering growing eggplant also despite that, like broccoli, I do not enjoy eating it; it was the first plant I ever grew, so it's more symbolic of a lifetime of gardening that it sparked. In 1 week, I'll be planting all my seeds and transplanting all my plants. I'll see you then.