GARDEN

It's garden time! WOOT! This makes me SOOOOO happy.
I thought I'd post pictures every week or so, & you can see the progress it makes throughout the summer. It truly amazes me every year.

I forget the measurements of our garden, but it's big. We like a big garden. We'll measure & I'll let you know the measurements in the next update. It is shaped like a letter "L" . There is the main garden, & then a strawbery patch that comes off the end of it.

This year we are planting the sweet corn in rows across the bottom of the main garden (the tomatoes were here last year). Here's a picture of the 4 rows of corn that we just planted on Wednesday. On past the corn is the strawberry patch. This is looking south.

This picture of the stawberry patch is from the south looking north. We reduced the strawberries from 5 rows to 3 rows last year. That middle row looks a little different because we just transplanted them to make room for some more things. On the south end we are planting cucumbers. We still need to set some fence posts up & attach some fence for them to climb.
Then on the west side of the strawberries are my precious zucchini. :)

Here's a close up of the strawberry plants.

Between the strawberry patch & the main garden, we are doing something new.
We are going to have a small herb garden. I have never planted herbs before, so I may need some advice! I have 2 chive plants & 1 Sweet basil plant (not planted yet). I have seeds for:
thyme, Italian sweet basil, chives, cilantro-coriander, Italian flat leaf parlsey, dill, lavender, & chamomile. I also have some spearmint seeds, but because they take over I'll be planting them elsewhere. If you have any advice I'm all ears! Oh, & the little herb garden is 5 ft. X 18 ft.
The shepherd's hook stays right there, because there is a huge boulder that we can't dig up & the tiller hits it. The hook lets us know where it is so we can go around it & not hit it with the tiller.

And the tomatoes. These are also precious! We have 2 1/2 rows. We have 25 plants total. 24 are "Burpee Better Boy" & we have 1 sweet cherry tomato plant. This picture is of the cages & posts only as we hadn't planted them yet. Up until last Thursday morning, we were haveing late frost & freeze advisories. But you can see that we even have the holes dug so we could plant as soon & the crazy cold snap was done!

My husband & 5 year old son got to plant them on Friday. Look how small....not for long though! The anticipation for big red homegrown tomatoes begins!

And here's the whole garden. I'm standing at the northeast corner looking southwest.
We have planted a row of radishes, & 2 rows of green beans. Today we will probably plant the rest of our plants. We have 8 green pepper plants, 4 cabbage, & 4 cauliflower. We still need to get 4 broccoli plants because the greenhouse was out last week when we bought our stuff. They said they'd have more ready in a week. We have to have broccoli! It's great to just head out to the garden with a knife & slice off a couple heads of broccoli to steam with our supper. Once you eat fresh steamed broccoli, you'll never be able to eat frozen again. (unless it's in a casserole or something.)

We may have a row & a half extra, so I'm thinking beets. We haven't planted beets in a few years & I am out of canned pickled beets. We also haven't planted onion sets in a while either. Again, it's so nice to head out to the garden with sissors & snip off some fresh green onions.
Man, I really miss the fresh food in the winter. We do enjoy having a load of canned green beans, freezer corn, tomato juice, canned tomatoes, & frozen strawberry jam throughout the winter months...
but there's just NOTHIN' like pickin' your supper fresh.

Also, these pictures were taken late in the day, after 6pm. It is in full sun all day & the shadow from the neighbor's poplar trees don't cover the west end until evening.

We all enjoy the garden, even our dogs. Louis (in Wednesday's picture) actually picks strawberries off the plants & eats them. He does the same with tomatoes, altho we do try to keep him out of them. And we heard somewhere that tomatoes are posionous to dogs. I'd never heard this before, so we really do try to keep him out of them! But boy, does he love them! They also like to play hide & seek in the corn when it gets bigger. I think their favorite is to play search & rescue with their ball in the corn. LOL
Maybe I'll get some video of that this year & figure out how to post it here.

God always blesses us with a wonderful harvest/garden & we are so thankful.
And, many prayers are said while working in the garden....usually while I'm weeding.

With this, we start the Garden 2008 season!
Woot!