Garden Update

We pause our usually scheduled programming of knitting and reading for this update on the state of my garden.

I got a late start this year because we kept having cold snaps and late frosts, so the garden isn't as full as it has been at this time of the year in previous summers. But things are growing! First, let's take a peek at the raised beds:

On the far left is a bell pepper plant and the rest of the green things are zucchini. The pepper came from the plant sale, but the zucchini were grown from seed directly in the planter.

The other planter holds the tomatoes -- full size on the left and cherry on the right. I've had huge success with tomatoes here for several years because the front of the house gets full sun for at least half the day. These plants went from having a few flowers a couple of days ago to having a bunch of small green fruits on them yesterday, so clearly things are going well again.

For a number of years I've planted impatiens in the beds just above the lawn in front, but this year Molly convinced me to give "chaos gardening" a try. The idea behind this method is that you mix up whatever seeds you have, throw them into the ground, and see what grows. We had about a dozen packets of seeds, some mixed, some type specific, so we mixed them up and scattered them across the beds about a week ago. Now we've got a bunch of little green leaves coming up. Let's hope that the bunnies don't eat them before they turn into flowers!

Here you see some sunflowers (the janky mesh around them is to keep the bunnies from eating all the leaves, as they did last year). These were actually volunteers -- I had a sunflower in a pot last year, and I just left it there to dry out at the end of the summer. Some of the seeds from the dried-out head found their way into the dirt and sprouted, and when they were large enough that I thought they'd survive, I transplanted them to this space along the driveway where we had a damaged shrub removed.

Finally, the herb pot:

I bought the (purple) basil and rosemary from the plant sale, and the tiny green basil plant was a gift from my next-door neighbor.

Still to come: I'm hoping to start some squash (butternut and spaghetti) seeds to plant in the strip between the driveway and the fence. We used to have rose bushes there, but all but one of them died over the past few years and we have a lot of empty space. Eventually we'll plant something else there, but for now that spot is great for growing vining plants because the vines can be draped over the fence.

I know my garden isn't very impressive compared to what some of you have, but it's a work in progress! Over the years, we've removed a number of plants that were here when we moved in and that I didn't like, and as they've been replaced, I'm getting a better idea of what I want the spaces to look like going forward. Please keep your fingers crossed that I have some flowers to share the next time I have a garden update!