Garden Update

It has been far too long since I’ve done a garden update! Last time I posted, I had planted my seedlings and they were growing indoors. Needless to say, a lot has changed since then!

Normally I put my garden in on Memorial Day weekend, but since we were out of town this year, things worked out a little differently than normal.

Instead of clearing out my garden in a weekend, it took me a couple of weeks. I worked just a few hours at a time every day. As you can see, the weeds had lots of time to take over my garden! I also had to clear out a lot of the newspaper from the lasagna garden I did in the fall.

I focused on clearing out the beds first so that I could spread topsoil on them and get the plants in as soon as possible. As you can see from this photo, some of my lettuce from last year survived the winter and came back up this spring!

I had a rather large garbage pile by the time I was through cleaning up!

On a slight tangent, our wild berries are now starting to develop! I’m hoping we’ll be able to harvest some this year.

Finally! All cleaned out! And plants in it to boot.

In one of my beds I have a Sweet 100 tomato plant, a chocolate cherry tomato plant, a beefsteak tomato plant, basil, lettuce, and cucumbers which were companion planted with radishes.

I’m also attempting to grow heirloom tomatoes in a large pot. On the path directly behind the pot and to the right, I planted some marigold seeds I found that we had saved. Whether they sprout or not doesn’t matter too much to me, but it can’t hurt to try!

In another raised bed I am growing cabbage, collards, spinach, Jalapeno peppers, Bell peppers, zucchini and nasturtiums. In the fall I will plant mustard greens and kale.

In my third raised bed, I’m growing cantaloupe, nasturtiums, and summer squash. In the path to the right, I have some marigolds sprouting.

My dianthus has come back from last year as well. We haven’t tried eating any of the blooms yet, but it at least brightens up the garden!

I also have lots of zinnias coming up from the seeds I saved from last year. I look forward to having lots of fresh-cut bouquets in a few months!

My herb collection has grown a lot over the past couple of years! From Left to Right: thyme (my seeds didn’t grow so I bought a plant which I will pot soon), sweet mint, chocolate mint, parsley (didn’t work), oregano, chives, 2 pots of catnip, cilantro, and spearmint (also didn’t sprout.) I also have our salsa pot from Keeper’s Coop, and a pot of rosemary seeds.

I ended up buying thyme (back left), spearmint (front left), and rosemary (front right) since my seeds didn’t work out. I also bought a lemon balm plant (back right) which smells delightful!

My lavender from last year came back, and I transplanted it from the pot it was in to a spot in one of our other gardens. My hope is that it will grow larger and we’ll be able to harvest more lavender off of it in years to come.

So far I’ve harvested lettuce and herbs. *What’s growing in your garden? Have you harvested anything yet? I’d love to know!*