It has been a while since we toured the garden together, so I am very excited to share this tour {and general update} with you! As you’ll quickly see, the garden is growing and for the most part everything is happy. We did lose some of the tomatoes we set out, but since we planted 60+ in the beginning, I think we’ll still be okay. I know we all want to see the garden rather than merely read about it, so let’s get into the photo tour!
We tried a new variety of pea this year that promised to be “petite but prolific.” So far, the petite is spot-on, and we’re waiting to see how prolific they are. I can confirm they are delicious however.
Growing Marvel of Venice green beans again, and the vines are beautiful. I’m on bloom-watch, and looking forward to that first mess of beans.
This is the best our potatoes have ever looked. Fingers crossed such gorgeous greens mean there’s a good potato harvest in the making!
Our squash and broccoli are also extremely happy, and the squash has started blooming!
We planted more than a dozen cucumbers, and a few did get frost-nipped by a weirdly late frost, but I’m hoping we’ll still have more than enough for devouring and pickle-sharing.
You can see both the way we expanded the garden and how we’ve gotten our young plants settled. Strawberry baskets make the best covers for transplants: allowing airflow and water, but preventing the wind {or frost} from absolutely destroying them before they’re established.
After a rocky start and losing a few, the tomatoes are starting to do their thing.
The onions also had a hard time: voles/moles discovered the growbags and nearly took out the onion crop rooting around. Thankfully the onions are rebounding.
Our kale and cabbages have been ridiculously happy, and we’re just about ready to harvest our first cabbage! The kale we’ve been munching on already {as have the chickens}.
After a good haircut, the sage is absolutely showing off this Spring.
The peppers are ready for the weather to stabilize and stay a bit warmer – we keep sling-shotting between the 80s and the 60s, with some very cool overnights. Next garden update they’ll probably have grown enough to look like something.
We’ve also recently sowed some Tiger-eye beans {my first time growing for dried beans}, a little patch of experimental sweet corn, and some watermelons.
This is such an exciting time of year in the garden: every day when we water, or walk the rows, you can see the growth and development occurring. We’ve been eating kale salads and devoured our first batch of peas, but it won’t be long before we’re able to eat so much more fresh garden goodness. I can’t wait!
If you’ve been able to start your garden, how does it grow?
If you haven’t been able to start your garden yet, what are you most looking forward to?
Have you ever grown dried beans before?
You’ve got a lot going on in the garden, Rebecca. It all looks so healthy and lovely 🙂
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Thank you! We are very pleased with things this year so far, especially considering the wildly unpredictable weather! 🙂
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Looks like your garden is thriving
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We’re in that phase where you can see changes daily, and it is so exciting 😀 Very ready to eat more of the fresh garden goodness.
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Im sorry to hear that you lost some of your tomato plants and that something found its way into your onions but it looks like the garden is doing wonderfully in general 🥰 how exciting that your potatoes look the best they ever have. Here’s hoping its a sign of things to come 🤞the cabbage looks like its doing great too and the sage looks fantastic. I should grow some as theres a gorgeous casserole recipe that uses it. I know I dried some beans as a child but whether I planted them or not I cant remember 🙈 I look forward to seeing how all those new grows go though.
I transported some of my saplings earlier this month. Now I just have to hope they survive 🤞
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It’s been a weird year for things tunneling around munching on things – the liatris are still being devoured! Even with greens above ground! Craziness. Hopefully it’ll all settle down soon and things can grow like they’re supposed to – it definitely it looking more promising now 🤞
Herbs are so fun to grow: most of them are pretty hands-off, beyond watering of course, although a few need a bit more attention.
Here’s to transplants surviving 🤞 and new experiments going well! 🤞
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How frustrating. I don’t really know what you can do to prevent that.
Yes we have a few and they tend to do pretty well. Although ones turned a bit woody now that it’s a few years old.
Yes heres hoping 🤞
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In theory you can put out traps and/or poisons to deter the voles/moles, but we have so many rabbits and etc too. I think some people also put wire fencing mesh under their beds, but that’s not a workable option now that we’ve got dirt in everything. Plus they chewed their way into the growbags, so … yeah. The neighborhood cats are not doing their job 🤣
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I’d be iffy about using things like that too as you can’t guarantee that it’ll target pests alone. I was wondering if something like coffee would deter them (as I know its meant to help stop slugs) and I’m not sure about that but it did come up saying castor oil can be used to make a solution to deter them although you need to know where the tunnels are. Some plants apparently put them off an area too like garlic and marigolds which came up as an option to stop both voles and moles.
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I’ll be starting marigolds soon, so we’ll see if that helps any. Although since they tunneled their hearts out in the onion bags, we may have culinary-minded ones, lol…
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I’ll keep my fingers crossed that it helps 🤞 I find it so strange that their into onions when some animals cant eat them. Then again I suppose the bulbs themselves are the same way for most animals too.
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Look at that nice head of cabbage! Everything looks amazing!
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The cabbages are SO gorgeous and happy this year! As is the kale. Apparently wacky weather is good for brassicas? 🙂
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Your garden looks amazing. Please visit me in Michigan and help me set up a mini version of this. LOL. We lost our tomato plants, Michigan was just nuts this year with weather. And honestly it still is! I will have to get some from the nursery and that is ok. However for some reason Wyatt and I planted a million lettuce seeds. I hope my family and friends like salad, because those are all taking off. And we finally have little baby shoots for our pumpkins! This was super important to Wyatt so if the seeds didn’t work I was going to buy those as well. I might still do that just in case. I can’t wait to see your garden later this summer and all that you harvest!
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Thank you! ❤ I would love to help create a mini garden! haha … Yikes to the poor tomato plants – the weather has been insane this year. Even if you have to buy the plants, it still counts! We've had to buy cucumber plants the last 2 years! This is the first year all our starts are actually looking like they'll do something. Yay for lettuce! We're having a bumper crop of kale this spring, more than we + the chickens can eat, so we're handing it off to friends and family by the bag full, lol 😀 Fingers crossed the pumpkins work! 😀
I'm already getting excited for the next garden tour, because everything has grown SO MUCH!
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[…] planning for content and posts. I’m excited to indulge in another Summer of Jane, and with garden tours back on the schedule, there’s more of that to look forward to! We had our little adventure, and ate our way […]
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Interesting
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