Our Garden!

As many of you probably know, Crystal and I have two gardens in our yard that we are very excited about. Last year was a trial year, to see what would grow well in our gardens and what wouldn't. This year, we threw together a mix of successful vegetables and fruit from last year, plus some new ones that we thought would be exciting. We're actually getting MANY more tomato plants than we planted. We suspect that last years tomato batch is to blame. We had so many tomatoes last year that many simply fell off the plants and rotted because we weren't eating or cooking them fast enough. It's these fruits that broke apart and let the seeds fall to the soil and planted themselves for this year. We are on constant tomato watch for new plants popping up - even in the mulch outside the garden fences (as you can see below).

You can see we have two 30 sq ft gardens. One against the fence (5'x6') and one along the house (3'x10').

The garden along the fence has tomatoes, sunflowers, basil, stevia, red lettuce, green lettuce, mint, oregano, chives, and cucumbers. In this photo you can see the mint in the middle and the three tomato plants along the back. The sunflowers are right in front of the tomatoes (you can see one stalk getting pretty tall), as is a basil (at the base of the sunflower stalk) and stevia (to the left of the basil). Also you can see the red lettuce and chives.

From the front, you get a feel for how much mint we really have! The green lettuce is to the left, as are the two cucumber plants, and rogue tomato plants in the front.

Here's a good pic of our apple tree to the left of the garden.

And the apples are beginning to form!

Our lemon tree was pruned back to almost nothing last Summer. It was growing so many lemons that the branches began to break. We were literally harvesting 25 lbs of lemons every two weeks. It is slowly making a comeback...

The garden alongside the house has strawberries, brussel sprouts, tomatoes, corn, sugar snap peas, chamomile, thyme, chives, parsley, and rosemary.

The right side are our two strawberry plants that are growing AMAZING strawberries. The small plants in the front are the brussel sprouts. These pictures were taken about a week ago, and since then we have seen these plants really grow quickly.

The middle of the garden are the peas. This is our first attempt at sugar snap peas and they are growing really well (and quickly!).

This picture is the left side of the house garden, where we planted mostly herbs. Moving clockwise from  "3:00" is chamomile, parsley, rosemary, thyme, then corn at the top. In the middle are more chives. 

And finally, can we have a post on TRN without including a picture of a dog?? I don't think so! So here's West showing how big the mint plant has gotten...

Even since taking these photos a week ago, the garden has filled in. We're very excited to start eating the fruits (and vegetables) of our labor!