Garden stuff

It’s surprisingly hard to blog with no camera! We’re taking them in this week and hoping to have them fixed asap. We only have a three-year-old iPhone that has very little battery power. I managed to get a few pictures of our garden progress earlier though, before our iPhone died.

I’m pretty happy with our herb spiral. I was worried it wouldn’t hold up to rain since we didn’t build real walls, but so far it’s had no problems, even with some pretty big downpours. I think with established plants next winter it will be just fine. In the pots are oregano and two types of mint. On the spiral itself are three varieties of thyme, marjoram, rosemary, parsley, basil, chives, catnip, strawberries, chamomile, lavender, echinacea, lemon balm, tarragon, sage, and I’m sure there is more I’m forgetting. I want to add violets, and I need some more shade-loving herbs for the backside. I still have a couple more spaces to fill on the sunny side too.

Herb spiral in the background. In the foreground on the left I’ve planted dried beans (red kidney, edamame, lentils, and black beans). There are a few tomatoes in the bed on the right and my peppers are being hardened off this week and will go there. Along the back I’ll put some squash, haven’t decided which kind yet. The lentils are apparently more of a cooler climate crop, like peas, so we’ll see how they end up doing.

On the right is my broccoli and cauliflower, which is love the cooler, rainy weather. Next to that are the tomatoes, which are not loving the weather. I’m still not sure how I’m going to stake them.

On the very right, covered in straw, are potatoes. In the back are the corn and squash. I planted them on a nice, hot, sunny day, and then it proceeded to pour rain for a week. I was actually not expecting any of them to germinate, so I planted some more squash inside, and now pretty much everything has germinated. I’m going to have a lot of squash this year I think! I’ll have to find some room to plant it all.

All I really have left to plant are sunflowers and scarlet runner beans. I think I’m going to make a sunflower fort for the girls, just to the right of the potatoes at the back of the above picture. The runner beans I’ll either plant around the fence where my peas are (I don’t have a picture, but they didn’t end up growing nearly as well as I’d hoped so we won’t have many this year), or maybe I’ll get some stakes and string and make a teepee, also for the girls. Though I’ve heard bees can be a problem.

Image from Harmonic Herbs