We are back at it! The garden!! We had so much fun planning, growing, harvesting and sharing our garden with everyone last year we couldn’t wait to get going this year. We were even able to salvage a lot of seeds from last years vegetables to replant this year.

It’s memorial day weekend so I thought I’d give a quick update on what we have set up for the summer. In this post, I’m going to be sharing photos I’ve taken on my phone over the last 4 weeks during planting and prep and then some I took this past weekend to show everything a little more “at home”.

We started our seedlings inside this year and for the people who have been asking. We purchased this grow light, which lights up my basement like the surface of the sun. Everything grew SO FAST and I also made Brett block out basement windows so we didn’t look like we were growing something else…

We learned some lessons along the way. Our zucchini was killed off early in the season due to a fungus. We realize now that we had planted too many too close together (so it wasn’t getting enough sun at the ground). Of course, by that time I was pretty much over zucchini everything, but this year we are planting less and threw a bunch of arugula seeds as a cover around it.

Year 2 of our asparagus planting. It makes for a nice natural divider in our garden. I’ve read it really takes 3+ years to get a good asparagus harvest and to not pick anything wider than a pencil. So they came up thing and we let them fern out. Fingers crossed we can get a few spears next year!!

 

Here is a little mapping of things I had posted a few weeks ago to Instagram (follow me on the right!)

We are changing things up a little this year. Instead of having all of our tomatoes on the far end we decided to plant them all along the back near the fence. It will make harvesting easier and we can use the fence as support if necessary. Sadly, we will not have our small 8ft tall tomato tunnel to walk through.

We are growing 5 types of tomatoes this year- Black Vernissage, Black Cherry, Lucid Gem, Cosmic Eclipse (I swear these are all just 100% legal tomatoes), and San Marzano.

Why 5? I don’t know, ask Brett. I said we should cut down on the types and last year we did 4 then. Tomato-Tamatoh. I give up and let Jonny-Green Thumb do his thing.

After we planted everything we put hay down to keep moisture and heat in the ground since this May felt like it would never warm up. It also helps prevent weeds from growing, last year Brett used grass clipping after doing the lawn.

Last year we also didn’t realize how large the broccoli would be so we spaced them out more and reduced the number we planted. I can’t wait to harvest these. Homegrown was by far the tastiest broccoli I’ve had.

We are growing the same 3 peppers this year. Shishito, Cayenne, and Jalapeno. We ate up all our pickled jalapenos by December so I cannot wait for these to get back!!

Outside the main garden, we have the bean teepee going this year with beans that actually climb. Last year Brett got bush beans (fail) which were very tasty but did not give up our teepee effect. This year though, I have already seen some vines grabbing on!

 

My herb garden has regrown with a vengeance. I need to deadhead the flowers, but my sage, oregano, and thyme are exploding from previous years. We also added Parsley and dill.

 

You may have noticed a new addition to our garden. Last year we had problems with blue jays swiping some of our smaller plants so in desperation Brett took my decorative owl, lovingly called Pierre, from the front of the house to the back to scare them off. This year in hopes to reclaim Pierre for the blow beds in front I bought a new owl, that our daughter has claimed as hers, but he is doing a good job in the garden thus far. No name yet! And Pierre is still in the vegetable garden, I guess for good. Any name suggestions are greatly welcomed in the comments!