A Stroll In the Garden

I was away for the weekend. When I got home Matt took me on a little garden tour. This is one of those pivotal times of year where changes in the garden happen over night. One minute the chives and tulips are just barely poking up their green shoots and before I know it the chives have filled out enough that we can start using them again and the tulips are on the cusp of blooming. Its amazing.

The Bleeding Hearts have bloomed. The plant is much smaller than last year though for some reason. They always make me think of my mom.

Two varieties of plum have set blossoms on their spindly little branches. We don't plant to let any of the trees set fruit this year so they concentrate their energy getting strong, vigorous roots and limbs first.

We rotated our garlic to the front bed this year. It seems to be growing great in the company of the herbs and flowers in that bed. The Johnny-Jump-Ups are so cute and the chives, oregano, mint, and sage have filled out enough to be picked. I am really, really excited to have fresh herbs again. The dried stuff from last year works through the winter, but we're excited to have the fresh, living version again.

We're trying to be better about succession planting.  We hope this not only makes better use of our growing space thus increasing our yield, but also helps stagger out the harvests so we don't have an abundance all at once which we must then scramble to eat and preserve.  We've got bok choy that are nearly ready to eat in the foreground.  They were started indoors and transplanted outside.  We then planted another patch next to it directly into the soil.  Hopefully they will be ready after we've gobbled up the first wave.  There are some cauliflower which we transplanted outdoors over the Easter weekend in the rear.

We still have half of a bed of carrots in the ground from last year.  They still taste great.  We're pretty much over the moon about how well they kept.  Its wild to think that we planted these carrot seed more than a year ago.  We planted the other half with cauliflower.

The peas are poking up.  Matt was happy he got all his support lines strung before the plants were even a couple inches tall.  It seems we often wait too long and those baby peas really seem to benefit from having something to grab on to as they're getting going.

Cabbages, broccoli, and cauliflower.

A sea of spinach under a low tunnel.  We're going to try the tunnels this year to see if we can keep those pesky leaf miners out.  They ruin so much of our spinach each year.  In theory though they cannot get to the leaves through the tunnel and just move along elsewhere.  Here is hoping!

The apple trees are starting to get leaves and flower buds, too.  Judging from the rich pink bud they're going to be quite a pretty addition to the back garden.

Grow little garden, grow!