Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

How does your garden grow? Hopefully like gangbusters!

Today we worked a lot in the garden. Here's what we have so far.

The salad box, with various types of lettuce greens, plus some swiss chard, carrots radishes and beets. We also have an artichoke that came back from last year. I thought they died off in the winter, but they came back even after tilling the garden. They are some very determined plants! And I'm hoping for some artichokes this year! Any bare spots in the garden are due to either slugs or cats. I will win the war against these critters!

Behind the salad box, we have our peas. Four different varieties, actually. I'm very excited for harvesting them in the near future! They're already starting to climb! I've also planted a few other plants in there with them that are good companions to peas-- onions, carrots, and a few other things. They should be going strong once the peas are done for in the hot summer.

Not pictured is the bean/corn box. Corn and beans are good companion plants, so I put them in a box together. They have not come up yet. This box is next to the fence behind the pea box.

We also have the girls' boxes. Lacy has planted many different things in her box. It should be interesting when everything starts to really get growing. Rose's box has a few sweet peas just sprouting, and she also has some beans in there. If she's planted anything else, it will be a surprise! I tried keeping her box empty for longer because I wanted to have a place for her to dig until we got new sand for the sandbox.

The next box has lots of different types of root vegetables. Parsnips, salsify, turnips, beets, onions and carrots are all just starting to come up. I'm very excited to taste some new things this summer/fall (though I hear parnsips taste best after sitting in the garden all winter, being harvested in spring).

We have another small box with onions and parsnips that I planted a couple weeks before the big root veggie box. They're really coming up well, but cats and Rose have digged in this box! Argh!

On the other side of the house, we have our strawberry/spinach patch. These two are great companions and really play well together. They should both produce more vigerously because they have eachother. And I'm hoping since half of the strawberries are everbearing, it will make even more of a difference on the strawberries. The spinach is still itty bitty, but it's coming up nicely.

We planted about half our potatoes in our potato hill, and we also planted various members of the cabbage family in the box nearby. This planting happened today, so no sproutlets yet. Soon, I hope!

And finally, we worked hard on our tomatoes today. We have 8 that we planted in a box along with other good companion plants, which are mint, chives, carrots and onions. We're really excited at the size of the back six tomatoes! We just got those today, but the two puny ones in front we got a few weeks ago. And all but one are heirlooms. In the foreground is a rhubarb plant that a neighbor gave us. We're still looking for its final home.

Lastly, we planted five upside down tomatoes. We're very excited about these! We have three of the same upside down varieties also in the box, so it will be an interesting experiment to see what produces the best!

I'll update this blog later on in the summer to see the progress of my garden! I still have lots to plant, including squash, more corn and beans, and potatoes!