Week 37

Week 35

My garden is a mess *and* completely great

Garden's in!

I cleaned it all up and purchased topsoil/compost/plants on Sunday, tilled and planted on Monday, and planted the last of the seeds today (sunflowers, green and purple beans, basil, thyme, and parsley).

I moved the tomatoes to the north side of the garden (fingers crossed this will help them *not* get their regular tomato plague). I also planted around the wildflowers that had already popped up - excited to have a garden that's a little more free-form this year (without me actively having to plan it that way ;) ).

New for this year are eggplants and sweet orange snacking peppers (and skipping some of the things that haven't grown well for me - kale, swiss chard, etc.).

Week 22

My garden looks really pretty from this angle (from all other angles it looks like really tall grass and weeds ;) )

Week Forty Six

I didn't know my new bushes would turn these pretty colors (now they just need to - PLEASE - last through the winter).

Week Forty Five

Week Thirty Eight

Week Thirty Seven

The whole reason I plant a garden

Week Thirty Five

Week Thirty Four

Week Thirty One

Week Twenty Nine

Week Twenty Eight

My garden + new (to me) 28-105 mm lens

Week Twenty Seven

One of my wildflowers

Garden's in!

It's such a relief to have the garden in!

This year, with some help from my dad, I tilled a compost/manure combo (8 bags of it) into the garden before planting. I also added Osmacote to help feed my veggies and flowers. I'm hoping both of those will help with the poor growing results I've gotten in the last few years.

My sister shared a bunch of seeds (and started tomatoes) that she'd gotten from the Rare Seeds catalog, so I'm excited to see how things turn out. I hear some of the tomatoes are yellow with blue stripes (!!).

I also got two different kinds of sunflowers this year - one that's bigger than the Mammoth ones I usually get (already forgotten the name) alternating with Lemon Queen sunflowers (shorter but should be a really pretty yellow).

As of yesterday, I also have straw and newspaper down around all the tomatoes, peppers, and between the radishes and herbs. I'm going to give the rows time to come up (and give myself time to get more straw) before I do the rest. If it works as well as it did last year (completely lifechanging), I'm looking forward to doing almost no weeding this summer. 

Week Twenty Three

Hey there, pretty.

Gardening

Last weekend, Erin and I tried to start the tiller with no luck (even looked up the instructions on the internet).    So I went ahead with a shovel and got about a third of the garden turned over.  We'll call this the before picture. 

Today, I got the rest of it turned over and weeded.  There were a bunch of wildflowers that came up again from last summer (guess those were perennials - awesome!) and some oregano (lower left), too. 

Then, I went on a plant and seed buying mission (I also stopped at Cassie's to pick up the seeds I'd ordered from rareseeds.com). I was going to cut back, keep it manageable this year - but I pretty much failed at that.  I'll just have to be better about cooking, sharing, or freezing vegetables than I ever have been ;)

And here's the after picture.  You're looking at: oregano, basil, sage, green onions, green beans, purple green beans, zucchini, swiss chard, kale, sugar snap peas, peppers (serrano, cayenne, jalapeno, green, and banana), tomatoes (brandywine, roma, sweet 100 cherry, beefsteak/another cherry (not sure which one I planted)), sunflowers all along the back, and the wildflowers from last summer in the upper left. 

August Garden

Well, I got tired of weeding before I actually *finished* weeding, so I stopped and took pictures instead.

First beet harvest

Overall garden

Almost ready to pick!

Garden update

Today, I staked out the tomatoes (cages were falling over) and picked the first of the green beans.

 Banana peppers

Tomatoes

 

More Garden

These pictures are from this morning.  All of my replanted seeds have started to come up, and I thinned them today.  The tomatoes plants are getting huge and the green bean plants are going a little crazy, too.

My first harvest of the year!

Roma tomatoes

Green pepper

Cayenne peppers

Overall shot (and me!)