Our Garden

It's high time I got a good record of our garden thus far. Here's the plot. It's on the back of our property.

I'll start with the row closest to us, in that first shot. It has a loose trellis-work. These are sweet peas.

Just on the other side of the trellis from the peas, is this little fella.  Give you three guesses what he is!! Not a melon! Not a squash! It's a loofah. My neighbor gave us seeds last fall, and two of them have come up. I want to use loofah in my soap-making.

Three rows of radishes. Adam is the radish lover in the family.

Three rows of a bib-type lettuce, I think.

These are rather thin and faint, but they are three rows of little green onions.

More lettuce -- a curly type.

These were a surprise; they're potatoes. I put them in last year, but they didn't do anything, so I left them alone, and now they've come back. Will we get potatoes? I don't know, but they were free, so we'll let them grow. They were old, squishy potatoes in the pantry with eyes coming out all over.

The lone plant is an eggplant. The next two are peppers. The four on the right are brussel sprouts. Ick!

Three rows of spinach. I'm eager for spinach -- lots of protein!

These are cabbages on the right, and at least one more eggplant down there. We may have some cauliflower too. I don't recall.

Cucumbers. One is for pickling (small ones) and some are burpless, for eating straight. I see some snooty cucumber sandwiches in my future!

This is the strawberry bed. It was in such a state -- abominably weedy! Adam dug the entire bed out, strawberry plants and all. He removed all weeds, turned the soil over, and replanted the strawberries.  They seem to be doing fine.

Tomatoes, ah tomatoes. This is one we got from a local organic farm. This is an Amish paste tomato. We have two of these, in the garden already.

And here are the remaining tomatoes. The two large ones (also from the organic guy) are a Mortgage Lifter and a Tommy Toe/cherry variety. The remaining ones are my heirloom Brandywines, twenty-one of them. About half are for my neighbor, if she wants them. As you see, they have some catching up to do. But the four larger plants were started earlier and grown under cold frames or in a greenhouse.

And here's our herb garden:  two basil, two clumps of oregano, and two clumps of sage. One lonely stalk of rosemary. These plants were elsewhere, and we finally -- finally! -- moved them here, right next to the back door. I don't know why it took me forever to do this; it's the logical place for them. But I had them in pots (which they didn't like particularly), so I could move them around into more or less sun, as was needed. This is a rather sunny spot, and the impatiens I had here were hating it, after only a week. Poor things! We'll see if it's just right for these guys.

There's our garden! We seem to be expanding each year a bit. This year we know we'll be here for a full year, so we feel free to let our gardening urges fly. Adam seems to be developing a green thumb. I'm strictly a spring/autumn gardener. I detest heat and mosquitoes.