HSV Garden Challenge–June Edition

My goodness it’s hard to believe that the end of June is here already!!   The gardens have gone from being bleak and lifeless…

…to lush and thriving!

We’ve already harvested all the peas, spinach and endive for the year.  A couple of the lettuces are hanging on nicely.   We have lots of green tomatoes, teeny peppers and baby squash and eggplant!

The green beans are loving their homes along the fence line.

The girls helped with harvesting the peas.

This week Olivia and Lindsey planted pumpkin seeds in the spot where the peas had been.  I’m hoping we didn’t get the seeds in the ground too late, but we’ve had an over abundance of rain again the last few weeks.

The little herb garden is doing wonderfully!  We were able to use some of our fresh basil and oregano this week in a pasta salad!

I mustn’t forget my lovely flower beds.  I rescued several abandoned Easter lilies from our church dumpster one year and planted them in with my tulips and gladiolas. The tulips are long gone for the year, the gladiolas are on their way, but now I have LOTS of lovely Easter lilies!

In the adjacent flower bed, I have a bounty of red bee balm, Shasta daisies, purple spiderwort, woods violets, gladiolas are forth coming.

My mother in law thinks we have too many things planted on our property.  I think that’s just absurd!  How can one have too much of God’s beauty??

Be sure to visit other gardens at this months HSV Garden Challenge!

HSV Garden Challenge–May Edition

The garden is looking much more garden like than it did last month!  We’ve added tomatoes, peppers, squash and cucumber plants, and also planted corn and green beans.

We’ve been enjoying fresh lettuces, endive and spinach for several weeks now.   Nothing like a garden fresh salad…if only the tomatoes and lettuces came at the same time!   I’ve been adding Gala apples, chicken breast and shredded cheese to the salad greens for yummy dinners.  

One thing I’ll do different next year is plant the lettuce/salad greens in stages so it isn’t all coming on at one time.  You can only eat so much at one time.   We’ve been blessing lots of folks though.   In the last week alone we’ve given away 10 GALLONS of lettuces!   

The peas (in the back of the photo) should be ready to pick by the end of the week if the weather holds out.  When the peas are finished, they’ll be replaced with pumpkins.   Part of the lettuce, peppers and the onions are also in this garden.

This garden has corn (far right) and 3 types of tomatoes.   There were a couple of cucumbers but I’m thinking the squirrels got them.

To conserve some space we made little gardens along the side of the privacy fence.  We’ve planted green beans and squashes there.

Lindsey’s herb garden is making progress as well.  The sage, basil and cilantro are doing really well.  The chives, mint and oregano are taking a bit more time getting started (uh, yeah, the squirrels have been digging in the pots).

My flower beds are still my pride and joy.   The tulips are long gone.  But now my peonies, primrose, spiderwort, lamium, salvia and blanket flowers are in bloom.

I love my peonies!

The red hot pokers have gone wild this year!  Will have to divide these in the fall!

How is your gardening going so far?  Don’t forget to stop by the HSV Garden Challenge and check on everyone’s progress this month!

HSV Garden Challenge– Spring in the Garden

Sometime between the first Garden Challenge post and now, it finally quit raining enough for me to get outside and take photos of my garden(s).   I did a lovely write up on my other blog S.A.H.M. I Am!, so be sure to head over and check out the photos from early April.

Remember all of my cute seedlings from the first garden challenge post?   Dead.   All dead.  It was not however my fault.  My darling spouse, in his attempt to “help” me decided to put miracle grow on the precious little seedlings…and fried them all to a crisp.   So I’m not too happy about that.   I’ve started new squash and tomato plants.  The peppers  will just be bought from the nursery instead of replanting at this point.

What we’ve learned??   MIRACLE GROW is evil!

Currently we have peas, onions, lettuces, endive and spinach coming up in the veggie garden.

The Farm Service Agency has some great resource for kids gardening.  They also sent us “Alphabet of Farm Fresh Food” coloring books and we’ve used those to learn about some of the vegetables we’ve already planned to grow, and we’ve added a few more now as well.

I’ve been wanting an herb garden for the past few years, but getting it built has proven to be a challenge.   So this week, Lindsey and I took matters into our own hands (and pots).  We planted sage, basil, oregano, chives. cilantro and mint.

Our strawberry patch is blooming and thriving (please God, keep the squirrels away a little while longer).

There are LOTS of flowers blooming, here are a few of my favorites.

By next month we’ll have all of the veggies in the garden.   I can’t wait to show it to you!

Be sure to stop by The Homeschool Village and see the progress other  participants have made in their gardens along with the Garden Challenge!

The Homeschool Village Garden Challenge

Spring is here and in these parts that means time to start seedlings and getting ready for full fledged gardening.   This photo was taken 2 weeks ago when we planted our seeds.  (The lettuce on the right was obviously purchased.)

Unfortunately, right after I planted my peas we had a 2 inch snow and have since had sleet and freezing rain.  So, for now, this is our garden…notice the lovely trellis for the peas to grown on…yeah, that’ll look great once the ground unthaws, again.

Our seedlings are doing well…most of them anyway.  The eggplant and squash will need to be replanted.

The girls helped with the seed planting and are in charge of watering.  Although they tend to get a little water happy.  We’ve already been working in our garden beds, but they are currently nothing but mud and ice.  Yeah…so much for spring.

Last year when we were in a co-op, Olivia was in a science class that used “A Reason For Science”.   She brought home a mostly unused science workbook at the end of the year.  We used portions of the “Life Science” section to study plants this week.

If you have little ones, you may want to use the Garden Preschool Pack from Homeschool Creations.  As usual, Jolanthe did an awesome job getting this together!

The Homeschool Village is hosting a Garden Challenge starting today through June 30.  Be sure to join in and link up!