Spring Garden

Persistence seems to be paying off with our garden.  We have been surprised at how challenging it is to grow veggies.  We remembered elementary school projects where we planted a bean or potato and it grew in what seemed like no time at all.  And, we've had gardens in the past that did great.  But, our veggie growing efforts have yielded almost nothing over the past few years.  We didn't give up though and we've put lots more effort into it this past year.  We built raised garden beds (you can see a post about that HERE) and have worked hard and spent a lot of money on making the soil better, battling grubs, etc.  I'm happy to see that our efforts are starting to pay off.

The cabbage we planted over the winter is looking gorgeous and ready to harvest...

The colors are stunning!  And, I love how it looks in the morning with water droplets from dew or watering.

Our dog loves to pull tomatoes off the vines.  She even got to them in the raised beds last year.  So, we built another garden area with a fence in a back corner of a yard.  We even put some wire mesh to try to keep her away from them.  We have six different kinds of tomato plants and they seem to be quite happy right now.  Yay!

One of the plants even has little tomatoes on it!  Woot!

And, all of the plants have blossoms.  We have very few bees to pollinate them though.  So, I'm planning to head down to the nursery for some bee attracting flowers to help out.

This is part of that little corner garden area.  So far, we have tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, two kinds of pumpkins, and various varieties of sunflowers planted in this area.  The pyramid in the middle is for strawberries.  We still need to fill it with soil and plant it.

In our raised beds, we have Patty Pan (flying saucer) squash...

Bush beans...

Three different kinds of eggplant...

The first planting of radishes are sprouting...

We also have a bunch of pickling cucumber plants that have recently sprouted.

The onions and garlic we planted in the winter are growing nicely.  We enjoyed beets and beet greens over the winter and spring.  Our lettuce grew so well that we had LOTS of salad.  It's now big and about ready to harvest the seeds so we can replant.

We've added more barrels to our wine barrel herb garden.  I'll post more pics of that after I do some more work on it and get it growing more.  But, I have been enjoying basil again, along with parsley, thyme, oregano (that grows all year 'round), sage, and rosemary.

Our fingers are crossed that our current success will continue and result in a veggie filled future!