Harvesting and saying goodbye

Let us start with the good things. On Thursday, Pooka and I realized the heat was definatly getting to her carrots. Enough so that we had to harvest the older pots of carrots. The older carrots were drying out and in some cases getting ready to bolt, so we pulled them. The carrot containers on the top are the older carrots, while the ones toward the bottom are the second sowing.

Carrots needing harvesting

I won't pretend Pooka and I were not a bit disappointed in how smaller her colored ones were. Brother's orange carrots were decent baby carrot sized, but the colored ones were a considerably smaller. However, Pooka and brother both managed to make short work of the over 10.5 oz of carrots we harvested for snack that afternoon. I am hoping the second and maybe 3rd sowing of these should get bigger as things cool off. Here is to hoping anyway. At least Pooka still got to enjoy ripping them out of the dirt and shaking them off. She was asking to eat them before I even had them washed off.

Last of the first set of carrot harvest

On the more somber/failure note, Pooka's Venus fly trap died. I have no idea what happened to it, I was keeping it well watered for quite a while, to the point it felt like I was refilling the water cup daily. I also know it got one good meal since we had killed a random fly (and it was in tact) and fed it to it. Pooka is very sad her little plant died. Especially since she bought it with her own money. I promised her we would do some more research and if she gets a new one (either buys it herself or receives it as a gift), we will try again. Until then, well it is another lesson in the cycle of life.

Goodbye fly trap

Going to the nursery, Pooka's going to get plants...

If you remember, Last Thursday Pooka and I went to the nursery to "plan out what she wanted to buy."

Well, if you remember, they didn't have tomatillos that Pooka has been asking me for since January, but said to call on Friday to see if they got them in. We called Friday, and nope, they weren't in yet. We called on Saturday morning and someone said they had come in. So Pooka and I talked Daddy and Brother into coming because I wanted to know what I had to save space for in the garden and Pooka wanted her tomatillos.

We got to the farther away nursery and couldn't find them. We asked and apparently there was a miscommunication because they had not arrived and were probably not going to. Sigh...

Yes, this meant a very very upset Pooka. I jumped in and made a deal with her. If she gave me $10 of her birthday money to buy herbs for the front bed, I would take her to the nursery we usually go to and I would buy her tomatillos with the $10.

This meant she would get to go to 2 nurseries and get her tomatillos. So she wandered around the Far Away nursery and found a few things she liked. Another strawberry plant, a lavender plant, a chocolate mint plant, a venus fly trap (Wait, how does this make food for me?) and I got us an aloe 

plant (since I had a feeling we may need it with all the outside time coming up), some more thyme.

Haul from store A

The venus fly trap has become a favorite with Pooka. She has also asked for a drosera plant, but she didn't have enough money. I told her one carnivorous plant at a time please.

 

Flies anyone?

But now the search was on for tomatillos. I called our favorite nursery just blocks from our house and they said "We should still have some." Luckily it was on our way home so we stopped by. Daddy and Brother waited in the car since as Brother put it, "It is just another nursery." True, but this one had what Pooka wanted.  

 

We went back to the greenhouse with the vegetables and they had 6 tomatillo plants left. Thank goodness. Pooka decided to get 3. Since she still had some money left over, we got some romaine lettuce seeds so that we can hopefully grow some lettuce everyone will like.Now to just get it all in the ground.

Tomatillos and lettuce seeds