Gardening time again...

Well, it's that time of year again...time to get the garden planted and trim up the yard. Along with that comes building our garden enclosure to keep the hail and little critters from destroying our garden. So, this is year #3 and version #3 of the garden enclosure. Next year will be yet another version, as it is not perfect this year, but at least it's high enough to walk in this time around, making it much easier to work in. We have already had a couple of small hail storms, so we got it up just in time. The weather has been crazy...lots of rain, which means everything is really green. It just hasn't been very warm.

We have two levels of garden. The upper level is mostly strawberry plants, with the exception of the tomatoes and a few spaghetti squash here and there. We planted 3 strawberry plants 3 years ago, and they have continued to spread until now we a garden full...so many that we dug up 13 plants and put in pots to give away. At the end of the season each year, Bruce just mulches them with old leaves.

Here are the tomato plants. I started them from seed this year inside the house. Next year, I will probably start them earlier. We put these little plastic thingies around them called "Walls of Water." They have vertical pockets in them that you fill with water, the sun warms them during the day, and they act like little greenhouses and keep the plants warm at night.

In the lower level, we have planted lettuce, spinach, beans, and cucumbers. They are just starting to pop up. This year we also planted two raspberry bushes to see how they will grow. They will not produce berries for a couple of years.

I also planted a couple of herb gardens in pots with plants that I started from seeds. There is nothing better than cooking with fresh herbs from the garden.


Here are a few pictures of other flowers from the yard. The blooms on the snowball bushes only last a couple of weeks, but are beautiful while they last. The other bushes with the little white flowers are called "snow in summer." We want to plant a couple more bushes to fill in the gaps in front of the roses, which are just now starting to bloom. The little violas are coming up everywhere from seeds that fell from pots last year.