Sunday, May 15, 2011

The garden is growing!

I'm actually quite shocked at how well the garden is doing! I've never tried to grow a garden of my own before, but I'm addicted to gardening now. My only "plant" experience has come from a few houseplants I've had, so I didn't really expect a whole lot of success to come from the garden. So I am pleasantly surprised to see actual plants growing and thriving!

Let me take you on a tour of my gardening journey thus far:

In March, I started some tomato and pepper plants inside. They finally started to sprout towards the end of March:
Chris built my raised beds and we slowly got them ready for planting through March and the first part of April...
(mixing all the soils and compost)

The first seeds were planted in April! I started off with spinach and lettuce and then a little later carrots and onions.
It didn't take long for sprouts to show up! And, as you can see below, I made the rookie mistake of planting WAY to many seeds in one hole. It broke my heart, but I had to pull up all the extra plants...otherwise they would smother one another and none of the plants would grow.

(lettuce)

(spinach)
A few weeks later, the little sprouts were making great progress!
(spinach)

After I was sure the last frost had come and gone, I proceeded to plant the strawberries (transplants), cucumbers, peas, beans and corn. Here is the garden as of May:

(spinach, lettuce, carrots, onions and green beans)
(strawberries, cucumbers, corn, peas)

My garden!
(please forgive all the tall grass...I promise we do mow our grass, we just haven't used the trimmer yet this summer...after seeing these pictures, I guess it's definitely time!)

Here are the tomato and pepper plants that I plan to transplant this week:

This week we will be able to taste the fruits of our labor as I can start harvesting some of the spinach leaves and strawberries! YAY!

2 comments:

Jeff and Serena said...

So great!! We did a garden one year, I loved it and felt like I had done something 'awesome' for my family...didn't do one last year (we were going to be away too much) and I think I've given up on this year...definitely want to give it another try...someday :)

Enjoy the 'fruits' of your labor!! :)

Lindsey said...

Mindy!! I am so happy your garden is growing for you! It turns out I really like gardening, too! I really want to try the square foot thing. My first try was last year, and even though everything was late, I had a whole bunch of tomatoes and peppers and lots of squash!! Sadly, the peas all committed mass suicide on the same day, but the green beans did so well it made up for that. Hopefully this year the bunnies don't do too much damage! Poor little things. Good luck!