It is hard to blog about vegetable gardening -- after all, things go fairly slow and there isn't much to blog about on a regular basis.

In fact, if you expect things to happen to quickly you are going to get dissapointed very quickly and you are going to think you are doing something wrong.

It's like watching a pot of water -- it won't boil if you are watching of it.

Well that's not true of course, it will eventually boil if you leave it alone and watch it long enough. But unfortunately, if you watch your garden too much and don't see things growing like you expect on your schedule, you might start doing too many things that will actually keep the plants from growing on their schedule. 

For example, maybe you start watering more often (and too much), or digging up your seeds to see why they aren't germinating, or do something else that you shouldn't instead of simply waiting for things to grow.

Not surprisingly, one of the best things to happen to my little backyard vegetable garden is that I went on vacation for a week. Things seemed to be going a little slow before I left, but when I got back it seemed like things had really started to happen. The tomato transplants finally have new growth, the corn plants are taking off, the cantalope plants are spreading, the carrots finally germinated (a few weeks late!), and I actually have a little eggplant growing.

Like most things, it seems like being successful at gardening has a lot to do with doing the right things at the right time.

For example, you aren't likely to be very successful planting lettuce in July in North Texas. Instead, learn what does grow well in our heat, which might include sweet bell peppers, hot peppers, tomato transplants, cantaloupe, eggplant, and large variety pumpkins.

I was very worried that last night's thunderstorms would wipe out all of the planting I did last week. We got a lot of very heavy rain in our area.

OK. It is probably a stretch to call what we are doing farming.

Most people would probably say that we simply have a backyard vegetable garden. 

It is simply semantics, but I'd rather refer to our little plot of land as a microfarm or tiny farm, instead of a vegetable garden. Afterall, we already have more than just veggies in there and we are hoping to branch out into some livestock soon too - getting some chickens if our Homeowners Association doesn't dissapprove.