Gardening and Growing Tadpoles

Our garden is growing like crazy. We started everything from seeds except the strawberry plants, and I'm just happy that things are sprouting. :) We have a total of 40 square feet. Six of the square feet have to remain fallow for the big vining plants, but pretty much everything else is full. I have three squares that I can put something in and I just need to decide what I want to put in there. So far we're growing pole beans, cucumbers, acorn squash, yellow summer squash, zucchini, romaine, spinach, mesclun, onion, garlic, broccoli, carrots, and peas. The peas are in pots on our deck because I ran out of room, and the strawberry plants are in front of our deck. I also have four big pots that are roughly a square foot and at least a foot deep, so I'll probably get some tomato and pepper transplants for those.

Here's a Shutterfly album with all the pictures:

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8Absm7ho0bNmG_

Our other big (new) project is tadpole-raising. Mary had mentioned in an email that she and Charlotte had found tons of tadpoles in the pond at Patton Park, so yesterday afternoon we headed there to see if we could catch any. We only had Colwyn's little bug jar, but after a half hour, Doug managed to get one. We brought it home and got it settled in a makeshift home (a giant tupperware container). This morning I took the kids to PetCo and we got a much bigger terrarium and some floating lilypads. I'll add some rocks for it to perch on as well, but it doesn't have legs yet. When I went to get more pond water (tap water is bad for tadpoles, oops), I ended up catching another one quite easily with the net I had brought along. So we have two tadpoles, and Colwyn has decided that he wants to call them both Bob. These things are HUGE.. their bodies are at least an inch long and their tails are another two inches or so.

Right now we're feeding them boiled lettuce but as they grow, we'll have to get them little buggies. When they're grown, we'll release them back into the pond where we got them. It'll be a nice lesson in biology, animal husbandry, and environmental responsibilty. I'm really looking forward to finding out what kind of frogs these things will turn into.. I think it'll be neat looking them up with Colwyn in our field guide.

Here's a Shutterfly album with pictures of the tadpole:

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8Absm7ho0bNmHI