My garden grows!

If you follow me on Facebook then you know that my garden was in pretty bad shape.

See? Basically a weed patch. But then, even though it was late in the season, and multiple people (who shall remain nameless) discouraged me, I got to work. In one day it went from BAD to THIS:

Yes, I was sore for a week, but it was worth it! I listened to a lot of Andy Stanley podcasts while I worked. It was the ultimate multi-tasking! (In case you're wondering, I did not forget that stuff in the back. That's fennel going to seed.)

After getting all the weeds pulled and ground leveled I went to Trad's Garden Center to buy some plants. Boy that place is dangerous! I had to be VERY disciplined NOT to buy more than my little plots can handle.

The plants in the above picture are now taller than the cages (about 5 weeks later). Here's what's growing. 

Cherry tomatoes:

Grape tomatoes:

San Marzano tomatoes:

And my other little plot contains eggplant and peppers. 

It won't be long before I'll be grilling eggplants!

Yes, I got a late start (end of April) and yes, these last few years my garden has ... errr ... struggled. But thank goodness we get second (and third and fourth) chances! I think this is going to be my year! Can't wait to be eating bruschetta from my own garden. 

Garden is growing!

I took a stroll through the garden today to see what is growing. Want to see?

The smell of the orange blossoms on the Satsuma tree is amazing!
Wish I could upload that for you!

Baby lemons...future lemonade!!

The peppers are coming along nicely.

As are the Celebrity tomatoes (or are those Stupic?)

And the cherry tomatoes...

The zucchini are almost ready to pick if I want 'baby zucchini!'

So all in all, a good walk through the garden..

Herb Garden

I have a separate herb garden that is closer to my back door so I can pop out and snip the required herb. All I had left after the winter was my ever-increasing thyme patch and some parsley that had self-seeded.

I bought basil, oregano, marjoram, peppermint, spearmint, sage, and lamb's ear (accidentally, I thought it was sage!) I also planted parsley and basil seed that I had collected but nothing's come up yet. Here you can see all the new plants I added. You can see the largish parsley bush in the background and the big thyme patch in the foreground.

My Garden

Yesterday we (finally) put in our garden! My dad had tilled it about a month ago but we got busy (of course) and so it didn't get planted. But in the meantime greens had started growing! Every winter I sow fiarelli (an Italian green like rapini) because I love them and rapini are so expensive in stores and they are easy to grow. My first batch had gone to seed and so when my dad tilled, all the seeds that were lying dormant woke up!

So we picked all the greens and filled two clothes baskets full. My mom had agreed to wash and cook them (I have a garden to plant!) and we will freeze them for summer use. When we finally had the plot cleared, my dad tilled it again. He has a little tiller that works just right for our sized gardens. (He has one too). He also dug out several roots that grew in from our neighbor's yard.

We had plenty of help raking and grading. Here is Timothy who wanted to help our but he was leaving for a soccer game. He raked from the grass so as to not get his cleats full of dirt.

After getting it all level we decided to use the leftover wire I had from making compost bins to fence in the garden from our yellow lab. I just happened to have some wire poles (rebar) that worked well. I planted 3 cherry tomatoes, 2 celebrity tomatoes, 2 stupic tomatoes and 4 red pepper plants. That only took up about half the space so I went out today and got more peppers, tomatoes, zucchini and cucumber. I never did find ichiban eggplant so we'll have to do without this year. (My husband is happy~he doesn't care for eggplant!) Maybe some lettuce and carrots too. I've never grown zucchini and cucumber before so that should be fun. So now I have everything in except for the mulch and tomato cages. Hopefully I'll get around to that next weekend...

Michael has shown some interest in gardening too so he took over the strawberry patch, dug half of it out and planted hot pepers. We have a dat'l pepper bush that is coming back after our freezes this winter, he planted cayenne and a jalapeno. We plan on making lots of salsas this summer!

Annie had received a gardening set for Christmas and seeds were a part of the set. She planted a bunch of them today too~cayenne! So we will have LOTS of hot peppers if they come up!

Oh, I love spring!!