Garden Time!

It's time for a garden update.  This has been a long time coming.  So long that our garden is even different than these pictures now.  It is so exciting.

I have learned through our first garden how much hard work it is.  I grew almost everything from organic seeds and irrigated the garden myself. Thankfully Steve prepared the garden beds with soil and has kept the other part of the yard - the grass - up while I have maintained the garden.  Corbin helps me weed and is getting so excited to see veggies coming out now.

This has been a lesson in perseverance for me though.  Tending a garden is constant and every plant is different.  I am such an amateur that I have a lot to learn. I liken the garden to my life in the Lord.  Constant upkeep and weeking so that the good fruit will grow. 

Here are some pictures to show you what it looks like and what we have planted:

I'll start with the roses and herbs.

These are not my top priority even though I like them.  I keep them up mainly because they are in our front yard.  We have big plans for this planter. We want to take out the trellises (they are ugly) and the random log in the dirt.  All in time I suppose. Behind the roses, at our front door I have two big containers and that is where my herb garden is.

It is funny to look at this picture now because the herbs are so big now that you can't even see the green pot.  On the left is Basil (yummy pesto and caprese salad), bottom middle is Thyme (I love for chicken soup), and the right is dill. (barely growing in this picture but huge now.)  These are some of my favorite herbs.  I grew these all from seed.

This is our speamint.  I love spearmint in water or iced tea.  It smells so good.  Corbin takes a leaf off and eats one every time he passes the plant!  Yummy!  This is one of the only plants I bought (when it was a lot smaller of course.)

Rosemary.  So yummy in savory foods like in breads or on chicken. Bought this one too.

Last herb: Cilantro.  Oh how I wanted an abundance of cilantro to use in salsas and guacamole.  Unfortunately it is not doing so well.  Not sure why though. I think I can save it BUT do I want to make the time?

Next up we have our fruit trees.

These have been a real learning experience in and of themselves.

Our peach tree is actually growing peaches.  It brings me so much joy!  I pray we actually get to eat a few off of our tree this year.  It is my favorite fruit.  The hard part with this tree is I can never figure out if I am watering it too much or not enough.  One fascintating thing is that God made these trees to "self prune."  It will create all these peaches and then end up dropping the ones that it cannot support and growing the ones it can support bigger.  We will have to prune the branches at some point but God's design is amazing.

Here is our apple tree.  I was so excited because it produced SO many apples.  They were looking so good.   Then I started noticing these little brown specks on some of the apples with this sawdust looking stuff on the outside.  After a lot of research I realized we got Coddling Moth on our apples.  This means that a little moth implanted its eggs in all our beautiful apples!  Those poopheads!  So I had to pick off almost all the apples and put them in water so the larvae would come out.  We have three apples left :-(  It's ok though.  Now I know and next year I will trick the moths (with a natural trap) so they don't lay their eggs here.  Since our tree is new it really needs to work on growing deeper roots anyway.

Here is the rest of our garden

Well this is almost the whole garden.  We are missing the potato, corn and sunflower area. In our garden we have potatoes, corn, sunflowers (one is taller than Steve now!), kale, lettuce, jalapenos, bell peppers, carrots, onions, leeks, chives, Roma tomatoes (my babies), strawberries, peas, garlic, green beans, and thornless raspberries.  Wow! 

I dont' have pictures of everything and the picture above was taken some weeks ago.  Now the planter beds are overflowing with abundance.  We are starting to see fruit and veggies and it is so exciting!

Our potatoes.  We weren't even planning on planting these because they are a "nightshade" vegetable and make me ache.  I love them though. We were weeding one day and Steve dug what he thought was a weed up and there was a potato on the other end!  We transplanted it into the right place in our garden and they are going crazy now!  We will see what comes up!

I can't wait for jalapenos!  Great for salsas and I love bacon wrapped stuffed jalapenos.  They are SO good. 

Leeks are wonderful in soups and sauteed with veggies.  These should be great!

I don't have pictures of the other plants.  I will have another post in a while with the plants AND their fruit and veggies.  My tomatoes are my babies because I planted them from seeds in March and then chose three out of about 10 plants.  They have thrived and I have the biggest plans (canning) for these. 

God has blessed us with abundance. I pray that our garden and all the hardwork that has been put into will yield a great crop for our family.  I pray he blesses our garden.