The girls new sandbox! Ok, not really part of the garden update, but you can see the kale behind them at least. It's a pretty good size - 5'x5'. I've since added 6 more 50 lbs bags of sand and a bunch of sand pails and toys. We picked up a little kiddie pool too, so now the backyard is just another day at the beach!
The first ripe cherry tomatoes. This was a few days ago and being located rather low on the plant, I was so happy to have beaten the critters to them.
The gaggle of tomato plants, filling out nicely.
Starting to see some color. When the first few start ripening, I'll throw them in the freezer until I have enough for a batch of canning.
Pepperoncinis and basil. Looks like I'll be doing some pickling of these soon.
Sante Fe Grande - a medium hot pepper. It's a little bit obscured in this shot, but yes, that's Takoda staring at a ball.
The bush of oregano. This was a bit of an experiment. I had chopped it all off for harvest last year, just leaving the bottom of the stems. It overwintered outside and came back nicely. I'll be chopping this again soon.
The kale and collards. Not huge in this shady spot, but not too bad. We've had quite a few meals out of here already.
Brussel sprouts way at the top. Waiting to see if it actually produces anything. Then broccoli. One of them shot up a tiny flower head, but wasn't even big enough to harvest. The rest have not flowered yet. Then cabbage - getting some little heads forming. Lastly, at the bottom, the Chinese cabbage. I've been letting the girls practice shooting their shotguns at it. Kidding. The slugs have taken quite the liking to this stuff. Yep, slugs did that.
More cabbage at the top, followed by more devastated Chinese cabbage. Beets in the bottom half. These beds don't get a ton of sun either - the beets are struggling.
The girls bed. The kale in here is the best we have. The corn topped out at a scrawny 3 feet tall and shot out little ears. There use to be 4, but something had gotten into one of them and exposed the corn. Lucky for me, it didn't eat any of it. It was well developed so I went ahead and helped myself. Shhh, don't tell the girls! There's a little bit of Swiss Chard in here too - it may be our best bet for getting chard this year. It's doing better than the other couple of places I dropped some seed.
The three sisters bed. The stuff along the left side of the picture gets a lot less sun and isn't doing very well. You can see the corn there is about 2 feet tall vs, the other side where it's about 4 or 5 feet tall. It's turned into more of a two sisters bed. The green beans never took off. After they first sprouted they were quickly eaten by the rolly pollies. I replanted, but I think everything around them was already too well established and shaded them out. There is one lonely bean plant in there that survived and it's tiny. I did eat two beans off of it yesterday though!
The first zucchini. Should be ready in a day or two. It was apparently very happy to see me too :-o
This is a hubbard squash. It's the only squash that I've seen form so far.
Onions in the back. They were about 90% fallen over, so I toppled the rest. That is the sign that they are roughly 2 weeks away from the ideal harvest time. In front is where the garlic had been. Did some replanting here a couple weeks ago. To the left, the second round of potatoes, just starting to bust through. To the right, green beans. Only a dozen out of 26 seeds germinated. And something is still munching them despite my attempts to dust them with Diatomacious Earth. Down to 10 now. Would love to have some beans to pickle, so I have my fingers crossed.
The first crop of potatoes - just starting to die off. Won't be long before we see what treasures lie beneath!
The cukes. These were a replant as well, so not as far along as they were at this point last year. But they are starting to produce. I'll have a big crock of these fermenting on the counter before ya know it.
