Outdoor gardening is in full fledge here at A Painted Pumpkin!  We started all the seeds indoors, in paper towels and the little plantable peat containers.  They were moved to the dirt at the beginning of the month. The pumpkins of course, are planted out to make a cool path, and hoping to have some different colors! My compost box took off with potatoes, beans, peppers, buttercup squash, a cabbage and a kale!  My yellow watermelons and my NEW LOOFAH were doing fantastic, until I made a horrible mistake.  I burned up my babies with tea tree oil on accident, after reading that tea tree oil could be used as pesticide. It probably would have done fine if I had only sprayed around the plants, but it ate up the leaves.  Now, as a nonprofit, I have to go against my wishes to be organic as always, and use this pesticide thats available to me..because something is eating my plants right now.

We started out the new year with the flu, but with many plans as well!  Living in an old farmhouse sometimes means its cold outside AND INSIDE.  It took years of caulking better and better each year, but I finally have it toasty and stable during cold temps now!  Not only does that mean we don't have to vacate during extreme weather, but now I get to actually participate in the houseplant group I follow on Facebook.

That's all folks, 4 and 1/2 pounds, about 10 inches long.

This one fell off, then that.. the first I thought I had pulled it off but we had several others just fall off too. *Sad face*

Life got away, with me being back in school, so I dunno what day of growth we are on, but I know we have had so much growth in Giddeon and the garden. Check out what's been happening! A lot of grass and a little branch-out. We haven't had to water since the last post though! We are expecting rain the next few days again, but we will have to water if it doesn't come.

The watermelon plants are thriving in the ground. They have plenty of sun most of the day, and Giddeon has them watered for the next three days...  He is learning to say some kind of word that resembles "garden", and spends as much time with his plants as I do.  I know our Papa is smiling down on us, proud as ever.

This here garden aint big enough fer the two of us.

Quite a few sprouts now!

Up-cycling one of my old formula cans into a planter can

We have roots today!  We also had to remove some paper towel layers, two nights ago, and add a dry layer, to soak up most of the excess moisture.  Now we have our seeds just in a damp environment, as opposed to soaked, to prevent them from rotting.

Time to check our plants.

It's day two of our Little Growers Championship Watermelon growing journey together.  I saved him two seeds to plant, himself, today.