A Garden Post

I think this is the first year of gardening that I feel confident of a good outcome. I usually get all excited come May and rush to get the gardens in, but after June and all the trips of the summer, things have gotten a bit too out of control to get it back and I find by the end of the summer, I am waiting to clear them all out and start over next year. Either the weather plays tricks on me and goes into a mysterious drought while we are away at camp or visiting family, or it gets desperately hot and the weeds overtake the gardens while we are away. Thankfully this year the rain and sun have cooperated with my summer schedule-how nice;) But Matt and I also went about the planning and planting more slowly, we built raised boxes to help with certain plantings, and have arranged the yard in a more manageable way for us. Another thing that has actually helped me to keep up with the garden is a new pool for the kids-I know that sounds odd, but it is situated in the back of one of the gardens which helps me to keep an eye on the kiddos while they swim as well as enjoying working in the garden. Knowing the kids will swim everyday, helps me to work in small chunks of time to keep up at a more casual pace instaed of a long miserable day each week of weeding and pruning. The pool is new this year, it is just small enough for our youngest to touch in, but large enough for the older kids and Matt and I to enjoy cooling off in as well.

Here is the box of lettuce when it was just first planted in mid May.

Here is one month later...lots of rain has done it well.

Here is one of our potted tomato plants.

And at the one month mark.. We put in around 25 brocolli plants this year hoping for a better year than last year.

Last years brocolli batch was sterile, and by the time we realized it, it was too late to plant new ones!

This year, we came home from camp just one month after they were planted, and I had a large bowlful of brocolli already for cutting. We have been happily munching on it all week! And there is lots of room for growth-looks like it will be a good year!

Here was an extra lettuce plant needing a home when we were planting.

And here is how it looks one month later! Along with the peppers and peas. The peppers are in need of some good old sunshine now after all the rain.

This was about 10 days after planting our bean seeds...and radishes below...

And here they are one month later-beans over in the right corner of the box...you can see the radishes are well under way along the front of the box, we have been enjoying them each day as well. We will be planting our second batch of radishes in about a week.

We have a new box for the watermelon, but, it takes such a long time to fill the box-so I decided to put a large container in the watermelon box for some overflow bean plants. The container allows them to be in with the watermelon and use the space wisely, but they will not be overrun when the watermelon takes off mid summer. Here they are about 2 weeks after planting the seeds...

and here they are a month later...

These are the climbing peas about 10 days after planting them...

And here they are a month later!!! I just love seeing the progress, it still amazes me... We added a different trellis before they started latching on to it.

These are some peas as well that we are using bamboo for it to climb. This was about 10 days after planting...

And here they are one month later...

This is our pumpkin patch this year:) We have alot of hopes in this one little plant...

It is off to a good start!

For the first time, I am growing yellow squash-I love to saute zuchinni and yellow squash in garlic and butter and then add some shredded parmesaen cheese to it, so I am very anxious for those veggies to be ready....

They are doing quite well one month later, it looks as though I will have my first crop in about a week!

Here are my butternut squash after planting-the perfect squash for Thanksgiving dinner!

And here they are one month in...

We put in a new strawberry patch this year because our raspberry patch took the old ones over.

I did not expect any berries this year but surprisingly, we have had a few tasty temptations!

I think I had mentioned in an earlier post about using some older ladders for the cucumbers to climb. Here they are when we first planted them, looked impossible....

But in a few short weeks, they are starting to look promising! I even noticed a little climbing action going on from one of them.