Calling all Gardeners

I love to be in the kitchen experimenting with different recipes, but my other love is being outside in the gardens. I have been trying to plant a garden for the past 4 or 5 years. I have a very shady property which makes it very difficult to grow vegetables, but I keep trying anyway! I am pleasantly surprised that this year my garden is actually growing! The moon, the planets and the stars must have all lined up perfectly this year!

This is my one garden.  Look how green everything is!  I have been eating onions from last year, lettuce, spinach and peas so far.  I also have a lot of squash growing – plus I had a volunteer grow out of the compost pile.

I had no idea what kind of squash it was until I finally saw one growing amongst the weeds!

Looks like a butternut squash variety.  One of my favorites!

Last year when my garden wasn’t growing well, I asked my husband if we could make another garden on the side of the house where a tree was taken down. I thought maybe it would be a sunnier location for some of the vegetables.  Not much grew in that space last year, but this year…

I have a lot of beets and beet greens.  We ate some of the greens but none of the actual beets are quite ready.  I have more lettuce that I just picked today and in that big mass of leaves there is one yellow squash growing.  I hope that the other plants will soon produce zucchini  but you never know.  They look healthy though!  On the far side of the garden I have a lot a different squashes growing.  I was looking the other day at one of the plants that I  thought was a cantaloupe plant.  That is what I planted.  Well, it isn’t.  It’s cucumbers!  I have several of those popping out on the vine as well.

You can’t see it, but on the other side of the squash I have strawberry plants.  They did great in the spring.  Every morning my husband would go outside and bring at least 10-15 in each time.  There is nothing as sweet as the strawberries that you pick and then eat!  I also really wanted to grow raspberries, blackberries and blueberries.

The blueberries are not liking the soil so I just amended it with some nice organic acid fertilizer and put pine bark around them so hopefully next year we will be eating blueberries.  The raspberries are not so great either – I think we ate 2 and the birds got the rest.  The blackberries have flowers and fruit but you have to time it just right or the birds get them before we do.  That’s ok, I don’t mind sharing.  I did give my daughter one blackberry that was about an inch long and she said it was the best she ever tasted!

As you gardeners know, gardening takes up a lot of your free time.  In february, I swore I was not even going to plant anything.  Well, you can see where that got me.  I just couldn’t resist.  My husband laughs every time we eat anything out of the garden and jokes about my million dollar vegetables, but I don’t care.  I just love to see it growing in my yard!

All you gardeners certainly know just how I feel.  There is nothing fresher than walking outside, picking what you want for dinner and then preparing it in whatever way you want!  There is really nothing quite like it.  So, if you see me next February and I tell you that this year I am not planting a garden, check back with me in July and see what sprang out of the earth!  Happy Planting!