The Beginnings of Our Vegetable Garden

Our vegetable garden is off to a great start and this year I thought I would chronicle its stages throughout the season. We’ve made some simple changes to it this year but most importantly, hubby and I are committed to tackling the weeds more frequently than we have in the past. If you don’t keep up with it, one good rainfall can leave you crying in tears when you see that the hundreds of weeds you neglected to pull have now doubled in size and multiplied.

This lovely batch of flowering onions is the product of last year’s onions going to seed. Once the onion produces a flower, the quality of the onion starts to fade. I’m actually leaving these in the garden for their architectural element.

 

Aren’t they pretty? We decided to just let them do their thing without thinning them.

We have a lot more onions on the other side of the garden for harvesting.

 

Look at how intricate this onion flower is. Isn’t nature simply amazing with all her details?

 

New to our garden this year is a melon plant. My cousin in Vermont grows the most amazing melons so I thought I’d give it a try, after consulting him for his secret growing tips of course.

 

We have two oregano plants this year …  both of them are back from last year. There’s so much of it, I’m going to have to try my hand at drying and preserving it. We’ll see how that goes!

 

A friend told me about Swiss Chard, which adds great color to the vegetable garden. I’d never eaten this plant until last year and love it! Why didn’t someone tell me sooner how fabulous it is? I will always have this plant in my garden now.

 

What’s a garden without a tomato plant? In years past we grew 20+ tomato plants. We cut way back on that number this year. It’s just too hard to maintain them all and use all the fruit (it takes a lot of time to can them). We used to start our garden plants from seed but it’s time-consuming and takes up a lot of space … so now we purchase plants from the local nursery instead.

 

This tomato plant is flowering … we planted several varieties. I told hubby I wanted more cherry and grape tomatoes this year. I love to pick them and eat them fresh off the vine. It’s my favorite summer time snack!

 

It never fails. I get ridiculously excited whenever I see the first fruits appear.

I’ll check the garden every day looking to see if anything new has happened.

This year we also planted basil, lemon thyme, butter lettuce, cucumber, and a few pepper plants. But I’m most anxious for the tomatoes to ripen!

 

Our neighbor’s cat likes to pop by too, and see what’s happening.

Don’t forget to stop by tomorrow to see a tour of a beautiful farmhouse in the next installment of my Charming Home Series!