Explosion of Growth

With the rain we've had for the past couple of days plus the sunshine today, coupled with very nice 70 to 75 degree weather this week, my little plants have become nice big plants!  I'm amazed how fast this growth spurt happened.  It's way beyond time for me to move the zucchini and squash plants into separate pots.  I've got a nice little green tomato on the Big Boy tomato plant (above) in the "home made earthbox" now.  How exciting!  I need a larger pot for the spinach; they are close to baby spinach size already.  My bush beans didn't sprout; I have no idea why.  Beans are normally so easy to grow.  I've planted 3 or 4 new seeds this week to see if they sprout. 

Zucchini on 3/14/10

Butternut Squash on 3/14/10

Spinach 3/14/10

The really bad gardening news is that I have some kind of bugs on all my pepper plants!  What are these things? Sorry it's such a poor quality photo and not easy to see what the bugs may be.  I'm not going to try to kill the bugs with anything, I'll throw the plants out and start new ones in the Fall.  I just can't imagine eating a pepper from a plant that had bugs crawling all over it.  This is the first time I've ever had this happen, so I guess I've been lucky all those years in PA when I grew peppers.  Or maybe this is a FL bug?  I kind of doubt it though; last year my peppers all produced nicely here in FL.  I grew red cherry peppers, hungarian hot peppers and green peppers last year and the only problem I had was that some critter was eating the plants.  I brought them onto my screened porch and they produced well after that.  I'm so disappointed.  I use peppers often in my cooking.  Guess I'll be buying them at the local farm market instead. 

The strawberry plants have flowers now and look healthy, and the patio cherry tomato plant has a ton of flowers.  I'm anticipating having a lot of tomatoes this year - hope I'm not jinxing myself by thinking that.  It's still early and anything can happen, I've discovered.   Always hopeful though and expect the best.

Strawberries on 3/14/10

Garlic in front, potatoes in back on 3/14/10

In my back yard, in the shade beneath my only tree, this sprouted up and began growing last year.  I have no idea what it is.  I don't know if it's a weed or a possible beautiful flowering shrub.  Can you identify it for me?  (Below)