It might be difficult to see them all in the photo, but there are 4 baby eggplants growing here. I was so excited when I saw them (I only saw 3 at first), I told my husband, “I have 3 baby eggplants growing on my eggplant plant!”

He said I made his brain throw an error code.

So naturally, when I found there were really 4, I had to tell him, “I was wrong about the 3 eggplants on my eggplant plant, there are really 4 baby eggplants on my eggplant plant.”

Since I’m still growing a good amount of nice tomatoes, I’m thinking of making Ratatouille when these are ready. I tried eggplant parmesan once and it didn’t turn out, so I’m nervous to try that again.

For probably more than 6 months I had an avocado seed that had sort-of-kind-of sprouted sitting in this window. The stem part of the sprout had withered and even gone a little white, like maybe with mold? But the root just kept growing and getting more branches, so I thought it might still make a comeback. I finally gave up on it though, and cleaned everything out to try again with a new avocado pit.

One thing I think I did wrong with all the previous pits was let them sit around awhile first. I don’t know where I got the idea I needed to do that? Maybe I read they should be washed and dried, so I let them sit out. I thin I also read that you need to peel that dark brown skin off, and that was way easier to do if it was dried out a little so the skin popped away from the meat inside somewhat.

But that was all hooey, I think now. I looked up the process again, and this new article said that freshness is very important to success. So my next pit, I gave a brief rinse to, didn’t even gat all the avocado off of it, and put it in my little floaty avocado sprouting boat (I like it better than the toothpick method because I would always break the toothpicks and nothing ever grew for me. That seed sprouted within days. It had a good stem of a few inches ling and two tiny leaves when we left for a 4 day road trip. When we came home, it looked like this. I was floored. I have it propped up against the vase in the photo because it was too tall and heavy and kept falling over.

I had to look up what to do next because I never made it this far before. I found several recipes that agreed with each other about the right types of soil to combine to move it into a pot. I took the lazy route and just bought a packed soil that said it was for avocados and the ingredients matched the recipes I’d found. My proud sprout is now in soil outside just below this kitchen window where it can get a little more sun but still be fairly sheltered. And I have a new seed in the boat.

Here’s hoping everything keeps on growing!

P.S. I read a bunch of avocado growing articles and didn’t save them all, but this is a good intro one, and has many other helpful links: https://californiaavocado.com/how-to/how-to-grow-your-own-avocado-tree/

While the garden started out rough, and many seeds never came up, and many small seedlings didn’t thrive, now that what’s left is well established, things seem to be goin well. I am very excited about these cantaloupe. I’ve tried watermelons in the past, but have never had much luck. Maybe they don’t do well in containers; maybe I just don’t have the skill to grow them. Either way I usually ended up with one or two comically tiny golf ball sized melons and that was that. I thought cantaloupe are smaller, maybe they would do better, and so far so good. These are a little bigger than my hand and have continued to grow since I took the photo a few days ago.

I also cut down the larges of the mammoth sunflowers. I thought birds were eating the seeds, which I was fine with, but then I figured out they were just falling out, and I didn’t want them going to waste. My research instructed me to lay the head out a couple days to let the seeds dry. Tomorrow we will attempt to roast them. I suspect at least a couple of the other flowers will need to come down soon as well.

I’m excited to see the flowers these beauties produce, but instead they just keep getting taller and taller. For reference, that fence is about 5′ 9 or 10″ tall. So I put the biggest sunflower at about 8′ right now. I just decided to look up how big they get (maybe should have done that before planting, but let’s be honest, I would have planted them anyway). They average 9 to 10′.

Considering how chewed up they got when they were but wee little sprouts, I think they have come a long, impressive way. You can see in the photo how bad those early, lower leaves are almost completely eaten. When I inspected the leaves, however, I never could see any pests. Several times I’ve startled away some small grey and yellow birds from the sunflowers, and since they showed up the leaves have been getting less and less holes. I assume the birds are eating whatever had been eating the leaves. I haven’t been able to identify the type of bird because they take off so fast, but if they also eat seeds, they are welcome to share the sunflower seeds for all their help.

One of the fun things the kids and I have been watching with these is the way they ‘turn’ to follow the sun, even though they don’t have flowers yet. The top of the plants still tilt toward the sun as it moves throughout the day.