Gardening is hard!

I've been having a hard time getting my garden to actually progress enough to "bear fruit." The seeds sprout just fine but then my plants just go kind of latent. Some of my plants have turned yellow. My father-in-law tried to troubleshoot via the internet and figured out some possible reasons:

- too much water
- not enough water
- too much sun
- not enough sun
- not enough nutrients

Hahaha, glad we cleared that up!

I think it has to do with the nutrients though because I didn't use a mixed compost in my soil like Mel highly recommends. Why? Because I was being cheap. The compost that I have been trying to make myself is not decomposing the way I imagine it should and so I decided to buy my own instead. but I didn't want to spend too much because I thought my compost would eventually be usable this season (yeah, it's still pretty nasty. I'll save that for another post!). So i bought a composted manure at a whopping buck per bag--I only needed 2 bags. I though, hey, animals probably have lots of nutrients, this will be perfect. The garden master at the farmer's market seemed to think otherwise. Fortunately I already have some fertilizer on hand so that is the next step.

Anyway, here is evidence of my failure with my snap peas that started out with so much potential!! Here is one teeny pea that I shared with Noah. the only pea of my entire crop. It sure was yummy. wish I had a whole crop full!


Here is evidence of more of a success. my beans have been doing way better than everything else (besides the peppers and basil). Now I need to plant beans in the other failed crop squares so that I can enjoy some homegrown vegetables this summer.