view from above

Aerial view.

aerial views of my home vegetable garden

carrot seedlings

I planted three types of carrots this year. Two orange varieties and a purple one. The orange heirloom called "Oxheart" is produces a 6 inch root, 4 inches wide and over 1 pound! I'm looking forwar to this. It looks like I'll need to do some serious thinning of all of the carrots. I tried to scatter the seed thinly this year, but still a million little plants.


Daucus carota

almost ready to fledge

The sparrow chicks look almost ready to fledge. The parents are doing a great job of catching bugs from my garden to feed them. Between the sparrows and the robins, I've got a whole crew out there working hard!
garden birds (Hortus Aves)

zucchini sprouts

The zucchini is up. A little yellow on the edges. I don't think it liked all the rain. That's OK - were having zucchini weather this week - sunny and warm.

more gnomes

I have one gnome who works in my vegetable garden and these two others in my backyard. One is digging behind the azalea, the other is fishing.

correction

I miscounted the number of varieties of tomato plants I have: Really only 10 different varieties, 20 plants. I have Brandywine (3), Early Girl (3), Marglobe (3), Big Beef (3), Big Girl (3), Big Boy (1), Moskvich (1), Chadwick Cherry (1), Rutgers (1) and New Girl (1).

These are all red tomatoes, mostly large ones. I have a mix of heirlooms (Brandywine, Moskvich and Chadwick), old non-heirlooms (Rutgers and Marglobe) and hybrids (Early Girl, Big Girl, New Girl, Big Boy and Big Beef). I'm looking forward to comparing these!

Solanum lycopersicum

tomatoes are in!

The tomatoes are in! They are in the foreground here, with hay mulch between them. I planted 20 plants, 16 different varieties.

Solanum lycopersicum

transplanting peppers

This year I raised one type of plant indoors from seed - peppers. They are a mix of five types of chili peppers. I made the pots from strips of newspapers. Today I planted them, paper and all. The pots worked great. They held together well. And even without bottoms the roots held the dirt in the pots. The only problem, I have room for 20 and I raised 90 plants! Chili peppers anyone?

Capsicum

rain on dill

We've had 2.7 inches of rain in the past week. Pretty wet. The gardens are soggy and muddy. But I think most of the vegetables have been enjoying it (with the exception of the basil). This photo is some dill, which looks really happy to me.

culinary herbs

1st harvest of the season

Today I picked our first garden vegetables. Tender pea tendrils, garlic greens, rosemary sprigs and parsley. We briefly roasted the peas, garlic and rosemary over a hot flame and served these with grilled halibut, shrimp, baby potatoes and as always a BIG salad. Delicious. Cheers to the start of another season of fresh garden vegetables!

Pisum sativum
harvests from my vegetable gardens

compost surprise

I found these in the compost bins this week. Maybe halloween pumpkins? Thanksgiving butternut squash? Gourds? I'll try to find a sunny spot for these volunteers and transplant them soon.


Pumpkin -- Cucurbitaceae spp.
my bins and systems for composting compost

tomato bed

I did succeed in preparing my tomato bed this week. I clipped the rhododendron way back (I couldn't bear to get rid of it), added 4 barrows full of compost and turned it all in. Then the rain storm moved it.

Solanum lycopersicum

gnome at work

The gnome is very quietly going about his work now. There's always a lot to be done in the spring garden. I have several garden chores waiting for me. Planting tomatoes, the patio flower pots, cleaning up the clematis vine.... not to mention just watching the plants grow. But there are also always a lot of other things that need to be done. Work, family. And then there's the weather, which has been cool and rainy the past week. I will admire my gnome and perhaps I'll join him next week.

so much for the broccoli ....

On Wednesday my broccoli was looking great. Not today. I have to blame the squirrels. The florets have been eaten, plants pulled out of the ground, and even the little collars strewn about. (I thought cut worms ate my first batch of plants, so I put collars on my second batch.) It looks like the squirrels had party in my broccoli patch. I've been thinking about a solution, but I think the answer is to skip broccoli. Out of the 40 different types of vegetables I have growing in my garden now, the squirrel only bothers the broccoli. I think that's pretty good.

Brassicaceae

more squirrel trouble

Here's another item the squirrles like: Begonia tubers. They dug up many of my tubers and nibbled on them. I recovered all but one. The rest I repotted and covered securely!