Touring my Vegetable Gardens

Since we were on vacation, our garden has exploded! There is so much greenery in one little space, I can't wait to see some tomatoes growing! I took some photos just to give you an idea of my second family I have growing outside our home.

Just a side note: I did not weed before I took these photos. Oops!

Here is a couple of zuchinni plants that have really taken off and doing really well:

Here is a side shot of our green pepper plants. We were only able to fit three of the pepper plants in our garden, so I'll show you another picture further down this post to where we planted the rest of the pepper plants. We are going to have a TON of green peppers, so if you need any later this summer, don't hesitate to ask for some!

And there is a random basket of plants growing in the garden as well. It was a quick spot to place them where I knew they would get lots of sun. We'll see if they grow better there.

And here is a view of our cucumbers and collard greens. I've never grown cucumbers before, so I'm thinking I might pickle them. We'll see how that turns out. If you're not familiar with your veggie plants, the cucumber plants are in the bottom part of the photo.

Pictured below is our spinach and cherry tomato plants. They are really doing quite well, and the spinach is almost going to seed. So we'll need to cut those down and I'm thinking that we're going to be freezing ALOT of spinach!

Pictured below is our amazing peas that have really come through hard times. When they were about 5 or 6 inches tall, these little birds were eating their leaves. Almost all the leaves were gone, and they looked like sticks. That's when I researched what to do.

I tried cayenne pepper, but that didn't work, so then I tried hanging CDs above the plants. This way it made the birds think that there was someone there, and the reflection scared them off. It worked!! And now our peas are doing great! Look how many there are! And I can't remember what type of pea we planted, but I think they are snow peas. YUM!

Here are some Roma tomato plants that I got from my neighbor in exchange for some cherry tomatoes we gave her. She started her seeds with miracle grow soil, so hers were humongous when she gave them to me in early May. Now they are starting to form tomatoes.

Here are some green onions that I put in the ground after we didn't use some from the grocery store. They still had roots on them and they are growing so well. I'm surprised, actually!

More green pepper plants. We had so many grown from seed, that we didn't know where to plant them all. So we turned some soil at the other end of our yard, throw some good compost in there with the dirt and here they are.

I'm actually surprised that they're doing so well, because they are in mostly shade throughout the day and only getting a couple hours of sun in the morning and in the evening.

Funny story, our compost pile had some cut up rotten potatoes in it, and look what popped out of the ground one day. I thought it was a weed, so I pulled it up, and up came the potato linked to the plant. So I put it back in the ground and we'll see in the Fall if anything comes of it.

Here is our "herb" pot. There is chives and basil growing in it, along with a Huge tomato plant that happened to start growing in it. I did not plant it there. But it's got yellow flowers forming on it, so we'll see what we get!

And our lonely green bean plants. Only two out of the whole packet of seed grew, so they're slow coming, but we've already gotten two beans from them, so they're safely stored in our freezer for later produce.

Wasn't that fun, getting a tour of our veggie plants? There's so much to keep track of, but I'm learning new ways every day to keep the weeds at bay. For example, the other night I learned that if you lay wet newspaper down in between your plants, and then cover them with some sort of mulch, it will keep the weeds down! Brilliant! So I did that this afternoon with some veggie plants. We'll see if it works!