How Does Your Garden Grow?

I was not able to have a garden tour this year—but I had dreamed of having it the Saturday of Mother’s Day weekend. I have learned that the garden is in its full splendor come Mother’s Day—which is just perfect since I love to pick Mom a fresh bouquet of flowers every year for Mother’s Day. In the past few years I have learned to grab a vase from the house—full of water, and some clippers to cut the flowers with. Then I stroll through the garden gathering flowers, adding them to the vase until the arrangement is full. Another option I enjoy is to grab my flower gathering basket, and harvest a whole bunch of flowers and bring them inside so that Mom can arrange them in lots of vases.

Recently I have been looking for a way to share our garden with others through writings and photos. I couldn’t figure out how for a little while, and then I finally decided to turn the Garden page into a Garden Blog so that I can share the garden with you! I want to bring you into our garden so that you can enjoy it too—as we prepare the beds for planting, start seeds in the greenhouse, observe the beauty as the plants grow and bloom, and harvest the herbs, fruits, vegetables and flowers.

I thought that for the first blog I would give you a peak into what is growing and share with you the beauty of what is growing.

Last year I planted some wildflowers in this bed—but only two kinds reseeded. At first I didn’t think that any had reseeded. I was pretty sure that the bed was only full of weeds—but Mom was pretty sure that they were flowers. So we waited, and sure enough those “weeds” blossomed into Coreopsis. Behind them is a large purple salvia plant.

This year the garden took on a cottage look. It was so exciting to walk into the garden and see how it had planted itself this year. All tucked in one little area there are black-eyed Susan’s, Lafter Roses, Gladiola’s, Chocolate mint, Pink’s, Johnny-jump up’s, Rosemary, Tarragon, and Showy Pink Primrose.

The raised bed walkways seem to be a little overgrown with black-eyed Susan’s—but with all the roses in the background who cares. I guess last fall when we cleaned up the garden, the seeds fell along the wayside and sprouted in the cracks.

Here we have some Fairy Roses surrounded by some wildflowers that I planted for the pollinator bugs—like bees and butterflies!

Day-lilies are the face of summer in the garden!

I just love sunflowers! I planted these pollen-less sunflowers a few years back and let them go to seed every year—and they come back year after year. Sometimes they come up in places that causes them to be classified as weeds. Hey, how many people have zinnia’s and sunflowers as weeds in their gardens?

This is our ornamental garden bed. The trellis has Christmas Lima beans growing on it. The corn you see is not sweet corn—but broom corn for making brooms. There are flowers in the middle rows, and luffa sponges growing on the back fence. I even have some colored cotton growing—brown and green. Did you know that cotton grows in more colors than just white?

This trellis is supporting some Japanese cucumbers. Then there are eggplants, leeks, kohlrabi’s, acorn squash, and our freshly planted white sweet potato slips.

The fig tree is loaded with bright green figs. Every week they grow bigger and bigger and bigger. In a few months we hope to harvest them and make fig cakes—they were so good last year.

This bed truly shows off the market gardening style of 30 inch beds,with wood chips in the 15 inch walkways. Growing in the first row is green okra, and the second row has butternut squash growing in it. Since Mom is allergic to green beans, this year I decided to grow some Bettersnap peas—a field pea that you eat like a green bean. That is growing in the third row, and in the fourth row we have some zucchini.

Our caterpillar tunnel houses our winter greens—collards, Swiss Chard, and kale. We also grew cabbage in here, and still have lettuce and strawberries growing. We grew broccoli where the tomatoes are now growing. Soon we shall remove the plastic roof, and replace it with shade cloth. The tomatoes will really like this, and we shall see just how long we can grow collards, kale and lettuce.

I hope that you have enjoyed strolling through the garden with me. Truly the garden is growing by leaps and bounds. What do you have growing in your garden?