How Does Our Garden Grow?

The garden. Aaaaaah. AKA Mama's Therapy Room.

I love the garden.

Specifically, I love growing things we can eat.

Flowers are cool too, don't get me wrong. We have a lovely perennial garden in front of our house, which we cannot take credit for since it came with the house. I maintain it, and it is very pretty. And the bees really dig it too.

But the veggie garden... I can walk through the garden gate and feel the stress melting off me...

The gate to Mama's Therapy Room

I am sitting here at 5am - dark outside - listening to the birds starting to sing -- and thinking about the garden and feeling all kinds of happy vibes about it.

Let me show you around:

Looking to the south after walking through the gate

In the picture above you can see in the front a little of our sons' pots, the small funky shaped bed where new green bean plants are starting to grow, then the tomato bed, and behind that I'll show you in a minute. On the left you first see a volunteer tomato plant taking over the rocks (I figured why not leave it and see what happens?), and behind that two "crop circles" with cucumbers - both slicing and pickling.

Looking to the north-ish -- D is watering his zucchini

Here above you can see the tomato plants in front and then the new green bean plants. Off to the left behind David is where our raspberries grow.

The boys' crops

The blue pot above is Josh's -- he is growing chocolate cherry tomatoes.

The yellow pot above is David's -- he is growing zucchini. They are very thirsty as you can see.

   (Did you know it has been quite drrrrryyyyyyyy out here in Colorado?)

The red pot is Samuel's -- he is growing yellow summer squash. His favorite color is yellow right now, so I thought that would be cool.

D watering his thirsty zucchini -
and a good view of our green outdoor carpet that we used for the garden walkways

S is watering his yellow summer squash and flowers
He is wearing his yellow hospital socks and brought out the purple bucket with separate water
to pour on Josh's tomatoes

Our cucumber setup

Here is one of our crop circles. Hopefully the cucs will get really big - they are flowering already. Our dog who has severe separation anxiety broke multiple metal crates over the years, so we kept the extra side panels that he didn't bust up. I decided to use those for supports for veggies. They work great for our cucs.

Our pole beans

I decided to try dry beans this year. Here is one of the pole varieties growing up our fence on some netting. I am also growing another variety of dry pole beans, as well as two other dry bush beans. They are heirloom varieties and if they are successful... they should be yummerific!

Space for the boys to play

Above you see the space I left for the boys to dig in... and we have another volunteer tomato plant. The ladder is for the boys to climb, as well as for me so I can talk over the fence to our neighbor. She is a gardener, so we have lots of chats about garden-things. And she and her hubby are the keeper of the bees that love our flowers and do wonderful things to our veggies.

View to the north-ish

Here is a not flattering view that shows how dry the garden is. You see in the left bottom corner the edge of a bed with dry bush beans and green beans, and above that the ladder/boys digging area. The bed in front is onions and pepper plants. I had some early bush snap peas in with the peppers, so the peppers are taking a while to catch up now that the peas are gone. The peppers are saying, "Ah hello sun!"

Beyond the pepper bed you see the carrots/radishes/onion/lowgrowingthings bed. The space in that bed used to be kohlrabi and Chinese cabbage, and now has itty bitty seedlings. And beyond that is the tomato bed. The random metal stakes in the garden beds are there to hold the netting for early or late peas, or to support the tomatoes.

I am trying to do better with succession planting this year. So far I have remembered to put something in where I took something out... that's what succession planting is all about!

Our orchard

I shared pics of our fruit trees flowering this spring, and yes we do have bunches of apples and pears growing this year! We have tons of apples, and not as many pears but we should still get a good pear crop.

Yummy apples

Mmmmm pears

In the front yard we took out a little of the lawn, so while we figure out what to grow there I decided to grow a variety of dry bush beans and some heirloom melons. The melons are really taking off! I don't have a picture of the melons to share with you today.

Here is some of what came out of the garden already:

Sammy flexing his muscles holding a garlic braid

This is my first attempt at a garlic braid. Not too bad if I say so myself! I was able to make three braids, and I saved some extra to plant for next year.

You know, I just noticed that our dog's butt is in a lot of our pictures...

Just sayin'...

Thanks for coming with me on a tour of our garden!!!

(((hugs))),
chris


Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart's desires.                ~ Psalm 37:4