Tulips starting to pop up from the bulbs I planted in our living room in November.
I had recently mowed down this whole area with the clippers, only to find out that some sort of bulbs were actually planted there. They turned out to be daffodils.
Still not sure what these guys are. Again, I thought I'd cleared out this whole area.
This was a surprise.
And the patch in the middle of the yard was a surprise, too.
Also no idea what this is.
Raised bed garden project Step 1: Two layers of chicken wire, 1 laying vertically and 4 pieces laying horizontally.
Showing the overlap of layers.
Pegged down with pins.
Tools of the trade.
First gardening battle scar. (It was actually from lumber covered with nails that we pulled out of the house during the demo.)
Step 2: Lay down the weed barrier.
Also pegged down with pins.
Step 3: Lay down additional strip of weed barrier so we can mulch around the bed and not have to mow along the fence.
First layer completed! 1000 pounds of blocks.
Filling the bags of peat moss with water so they won't be too dry when I mix it with the other ingredients.
The cube of blocks we had delivered. At this point it's about half empty.
This is half of the path I had to take to bring the blocks from the pallet to the back yard. I could only carry 4 blocks on the dolly at a time.
This is the other half of the path. It was a long ways.
Completed! All 2000 pounds of it.
And this is what I call cheating.
Cheater cheater pumpkin eater!
Our ghetto backyard. Our neighbours love us. All we need is some cars up on blocks.
Our new grape vine!
My one tulip. Yay!
Managed to get rid of the piles of stuff, but now we have bald spots. Oh well.
The garden is planted! To the right is the grapevine (Charlie likes to call it the grape stick), and in the background are three newly planted blueberry bushes.
The blueberries.
Surprise!
And apparently these are all daylillies. Yay!
Our grape stick is doing smashingly!
Yay! The first little ones to come up. Only took 3 days!
Happy strawberries!
Very happy strawberries.
Hopefully you can tell the difference between where I've weeded and where I haven't. I raise my fist at the "seed free" compost and its alfalfa.
The first strawberry bloom!
Which I sadly had to pluck off.
Happy grape stick.
Happy blueberry bush!
The first blueberry blooms.
Which I also had to pluck off. Sadness.
In 50-60 days, we will have new beds of dwarf sunflowers! Very fun.
The garden as of June 1.
The sweet potatoes came back to life! They were looking pretty sad.
Big, happy strawberries.
Strawberries and somewhat eaten green beans. This is the part I haven't weeded yet. Blurgh.
Strawberries and climbing sugar snap peas.
Sugar snap peas, arugula, roma tomatoes.
The latest additions to the garden: roma tomatoes, "Super Fantastic" tomatoes (I got them just for the name), green, red and yellow peppers.
The new guys. Tomatoes, peppers and eggplant in the corner.
I had to chop this strawberry plant down a couple weeks ago because it was almost completely eaten by some sort of bug or something. But it's growing back!
The sunflowers have germinated! I think something has eaten the ones on the right, though, because there were at least seven and this morning there were two. Boo.
Peas! This is the first sugar snap pea I discovered in the garden. My garden is producing food!
Look at all those blossoms!
The peas are just about to the top of the tomato cages already.
Basil
Dill
Cilantro
Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant
Arugula about ready to harvest
Before. I really did plant sunflowers on both sides. I'm pretty sure the mole got the ones on the right. Bummer.
After.
Day lilies along the side of the house.
Progress.
Look at all those peas!
Stupid caterpillar eating my arugula.
This, boys and girls, is called bolting. The plant sends up its seed head, and it's pretty much finished.
Arugula.
What's left of the broccoli.
Poor broccoli plants.
Eggplant in bloom.
Big ol' tomatoes.
Peppers.
Tomato trellises around the Super Fantastic tomatoes.
The poor pepper plant that I planted in an unfortunate spot. The tomatoes block out all of its light.
Grape stick.
Basil.
Strawberry leaf blight on some of the non-resistant varieties from all the rain we've had.
Goodbye, broccoli. It was nice knowing you.
Harvesting the arugula!
And the endive.
And the peas.
Just under half a pound.
Homegrown salad! Including homegrown arugula, endive and peas.
AAND locally raised buffalo burgers.
The house and the sunflowers I planted out front. This is at 46 days of the 50-60 days to maturity.
The grass growing on top of the weed barrier is why I decided I needed to pull the stuff up.
The shepherd's crooks we put in as a temporary trellis solution for the grape stick. We'll be putting in a more permanent trellis probably next spring when I get more grape vines.
The strawberries and carrots are still going crazy. The carrots should be ready to harvest in about four days.
We actually made some strawberries! Unfortunately I was a little slow on the get up with these, and they got eaten before I picked them.
Cilantro flowering.
Tomatoes. Right now the Super Fantastics are about 4 1/2 feet tall.
Eggplants
Our first baby pepper
Super Fantastic
Romas
The last of the arugula. This became dinner.
A twelve-spotted lady beetle on one of our blueberry bushes.
The first sunflower that started to open up. 56 days.
Lovely, a tree growing in our gutter.
Before pulling up the weed barrier.
The aftermath of pulling up the weed barrier.
What it looks like now. It's not pretty, but it'll be much better after the grass grows back. It will be easier to maintain and will look better, too.
Sunflowers, 57 days. They're supposed to be 12-24" tall, but most of them are more like 3 feet tall.
The first one to fully bloom. 57 days.
Our first baby eggplant.
Sunflowers, 59 days. About half of them are blooming now, although they are facing towards the house. I had imagined that you'd be able to see them as you looked towards the house, but ha ha, they're called sunflowers for a reason. The heads follow the path of the sun, and since it's behind the house most of the day, they face towards the house. Oh well, I guess I'll be able to enjoy looking at them instead of all the people who walk by.
Mushrooms growing in our front yard. Not planned.
Our second eggplant.
The first carrots! I decided to leave the rest in to grow a little more.
After I broke the green pepper plant in half. :(
Our first (and probably only) pepper.
Our first green onions.
Homegrown produce!
Monday night's harvest. Tomatoes that it looks like a cat tried to eat but changed its mind, green beans, and the first two strawberries that we actually got to eat. :)
Those look like teeth marks to me. I was able to cut off that section and use the rest for fried green tomatoes.
Local lettuce, homegrown sugar snap peas and green pepper, local goat cheese.
Wednesday night's harvest. A green tomato that seems to have fallen off the plant, and another strawberry.
A big ol' box of local peaches!
The garden as of 7/23.
Sweet potato vines.
Out of control basil and dill.
Our first ripening tomato!
Cilantro turning to coriander.
Roma tomatoes out of control.
It's a jungle in there!
Flowers and baby tomatoes everywhere!
The poor pepper plants got no light where I planted them and have become tall and spindly trying to get to the light.
Look at all these green beans!
This is all from two days' worth of picking on a 4 foot row of bush beans.
Peach bread/cake.
Our first ripe tomato. :( A squirrel got it.
Our first ripe strawberry!
Happy sunflowers.
Baby sunflower heads growing to the sides of the big head.
Surprise! Lillies.
This plant had at least 11 baby sunflower heads in addition to the big one.
Pulled up the dill and cilantro/coriander.
One evening's harvest.
Drying the dill and coriander.
Our worm condo!
Our first quasi-ripe super fantastic tomato. :( Again, a victim of a squirrel.
Built a fortress for the grape stick.
Got some wilt going on, but the plants still seem to be fruiting fine. And tomato trellises are worth jack squat.
This is after I propped the romas back up after they all completely fell over (within their cages). Stupid useless cages.
Beans, carrots, strawberries and basil. The basil became a completely amazing pesto.
The remnants of our pico de gallo made with 100% homegrown roma tomatoes.
Our new extravagant tomato trellising system.
Romas waiting to ripen.
Super Fantastics.
A caterpillar I found on the romas. Be gone with you!
Adding the coconut coir bedding to the worm condo.
We've got worms!
Adding more bedding on top of the worms and compost.
Ta-da!
Bruschetta
Putting the sunflowers to rest - aka cutting them down and feeding them to the birds.
The last few that were hanging on.
Tomato carrot basil soup
My first attempt at freezing for food preservation.
FAIL. I read the instructions and everything! I did it right! Bah. What a waste.
Plus it actually took a piece of my flesh with it.
A lot o' romas.
Something happened to this guy.
This one got caught in the middle by the trellis when it was young.
Basil and green onions.
Worms!
Putting carrot greens in a worm bin = bad idea. They will sprout!
Super fantastics.
Still lots of romas.
Stuffed tomatoes.
Twelve pounds!
Trying my hand at making red wine tomato sauce. Here I'm removing the skins.
Pureeing.
Sauteeing onions and herbs.
Adding the wine.
Simmering and thickening.
Finished.
Learned my lesson and went the freezer bag route this time.
Another 9 pounds in addition to my 12 pounds.
The first and last crop of peppers. By the time we ate the red one, it had turned completely red all over.
I tried to salvage these greenies before the first frost, but they weren't ideal to begin with and ended up rotting before they ripened.
My farm truck.
I feel so farmy!
Building the compost pile.
A sad-looking garden that needs to be put to rest for the winter.
The basil toppled over and then got hit by fost.
This is what it looked like when I pulled it out.
It's a basil tree!
1) Lay of straw (brown layer). 2) Then the green layer.
3) Add soil on top. 4) Repeat.
The garden after pulling everything out.
I left this poor green pepper plant in because it still had a couple peppers on it that weren't worth picking. It's still alive (11/16) and producing more peppers!
Getting ready to plant the garlic.
Determining correct spacing.
