How does your garden grow?

I love pickles. Sweet, cold, crispy crunchy pickles. Yum.
And as if the average grocery store pickle can't get any better, I'm a sucker for the homemade pickle. For example, at the Capital Grill in Little Rock, they make their own pickles. That is one of the many items that will keep me coming back to that place... It's soo good... But, I digress.
So a couple of months ago, I started tossing around the idea of growing my own cucumbers so I could make my own pickles. I figured that if I was going to make my own pickles, they were going to be my cucumbers as well. They were going to be 115 percent homemade.
But then reality kicked in -- I live in an apartment. I don't own land that I can tear up and make my little cucumber farm. Further research showed that pickles can't be grown in pots because they spread across the ground. Thus, my dream was crushed. I will have to settle with buying cucumbers at the Farmer's Market and making them into pickles. I'll keep you updated on that adventure.
But my dream of being a gardener was still alive. My parents aren't really into the vegetable gardening scene, they're more flower gardeners. We did have a garden when I was a kid and we had a fenced in yard, but we haven't had one since.
My grandfather, on the other hand, is a gardening expert. He grows a TON of tomatoes. And onions. And good Lord, who knows what else. And he's 80 something years old.
My aunt and uncle also keep a garden, which always produces delicious vegetables, especially some great corn.
So with this much gardening in my family, I figured I was destined to garden greatness.
Once again though -- I don't have a yard.
Therefore, I have resorted to an urban garden: I grow my vegetables and fruit in pots. With the help of my fella, we spent a Sunday afternoon picking out plants, soil, containers, and seeds. It was a fun trip to Lowe's.

 

I am growing three different types of peppers and I have two upside-down tomato plants, along with a little herb garden. Everything seems to growing quite well, despite a slow start and some crazy Arkansas weather. 

Here are the upside tomato plants -- which were started with seeds, mind you. They have to grow five inches tall, and then I get to flip them over and hang them. I think I will replant the other little sprouts because there are only suppose to be one plant per little hole, despite planting three seeds per hole. I might have a lot of tomatoes by the middle of the summer.

 Here's another picture of the tomatoes and my herb garden. It will someday have cilantro, basil, and oregano. It has a few sprouts, but nothing dramatic yet. This could be a bust.

And here are my beautiful pepper plants. They were started with little plants, but they now have buds on them, so peppers are in the works. I need to get some posts for them because as you can see, they are leaning a little bit. 

So this is what I'll be doing this summer. I'll keep you up to date on the progress. And I might even have peppers, tomatoes, and herbs to give away. Keep your fingers crossed.

"Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?" Mine grows in pots. I love it.