Adventures in gardening

I've always wanted a vegetable garden. I see so many success stories and I want to have some home grown veggies. Unfortunately, my imagination is a bit more advanced than my gardening skills.

Now, I'm sure a large part of it is lack of space and every time I've grown vegetable plants, they've been potted. It's not like this is a foreign or unsuccessful idea, but I choose bad pots. Usually shallow box planters that are probably better suited for flowers.

Several years ago, when I was living in College Station the first time, I received some banana pepper and sweet purple pepper plants. One of the vets I worked with at the time took pity on these pepper plants at the nursery and purchased them - I think they were on sale or clearance, or something like that. Either way, she brought several small plants to the pet hospital and these are the ones that I selected. The plants did quite well and even survived my move to Austin. I grew several banana peppers and I think only one or two small purple peppers.

The following year, after saving seeds from the plants I'd grown, I planted some more peppers. Again, I was successful in cultivating several banana peppers. I think some of the others grew, but I don't remember eating them. They probably died on the plant or something. I can't really remember that far back.

I kept seeds, including some from peppers I'd purchased with high hopes of growing bell peppers (especially since red, yellow, and orange ones are usually so expensive). Although, I didn't try to grow vegetables for several years after that, I decided this year I'd try again.

I was inspired to do so because on day when soaking some black eyed peas for dinner, I noticed that several of them had sprouted. I left the sprouted ones in water and cooked up the rest. Many of the bean developed leaves and I decided it'd be fun to plant them and see what happened. So, I planted six of the little plants in one planter box, and I planted some banana peppers and bell peppers in the other box. One bean plant survived, and one pepper plant grew. A bit disappointing I think.

My bean plant has done fairly well though. So far it has produced about 10 black-eyed peas from 3 different pods. Ok, sure, it doesn't make a dinner, but give me a break, I have one plant! More are on the way though. There are two or three pods on the plant now.

My pepper plant looks impressive. I have no clue which type of pepper that I planted actually grew. I was hoping to find out based on fruit it produced. This is the largest pepper plant I've grown. It remains barren however. Several flowers have bloomed, but no peppers have developed. I don't know why. More flower buds are on the plant, so we'll see if I get some peppers, but who knows.

I hope next year to continue with peppers and black-eyed peas. With any luck, I can get more than one plant to actually grow. I do need either an actual garden or deeper pots though, so that's something to look forward to. I'll try to get some pictures to post of my poor little plants so I can show off my green thumb, which is apparently a bit yellow. At least my house plants look good for the most part.