Another Year of Beautiful Flowers

Wonderful Year For Iris

Our 2007 Spring Vegetable Garden turns into a Fall Garden

The beginnings of a garden. Carrots are planted (on the left), along with the lettuce and spinach (second row from the left). Peas are in the ground (third row from the left). On the far right side, although it is hard to see in this picture is the corn.

A little later, everything is growing and you will notice the peas (third row from the left) now has chicken wire fencing up for the sweet little peas to climb.

Time to plant the tomatoes in the far left side of the garden. Just to the right you can see all the little stakes in the ground with little plants peeking up through the straw. These are our peppers.....over 50 plants of peppers. Yummy!

A landscape view of the new garden. Everything is in and the tomato plants have been marked with tall wooden stakes which will come in handy later to tie up the long arms of the plants.

Another view of the tomato plants that are so hard to see right now. But that will change soon and will become a large mass of vining green arms of plants, loaded with tomatoes.

Pepper plants are getting a little taller, along with the tomato plants on the right. This year we planted 4th of July tomatoes, Big Boy's and Big Girl's and a few cherry tomatoes at the request of a friend.

Centered are the carrots, growing quite well and in the foreground the corn is making it's way into the world.

Almost forgot about the green beans. This year we planted only stringless pole beans, our favorite. They climb up the wire fence and make it very easy for us to harvest the delicious beans. The fencing is about 8 feet tall and we will be using a ladder to reach the top later in the season.

Another look at the new garden.

Remember those stringless pole green beans. Well, they grew. And they grew. And as I climbed my ladder and picked the beans all I could think of was Jack and the Beanstalk. Beans really do grow up and up and up.

On the far right, you can see the yellowing of the romaine lettuce and spinach. They are done for the year and seeding out. Time to pluck them out of the ground and toss them in the compost pile. Onions are growing and the pepper plants are getting bigger.

Here you can see the pepper plants have set fruit. The banana peppers set early and we had to pick some to add to our fried potatoes and onions.

Another view of the green beans!

A little blurry, but here hangs a bean. But not for long.

Peppers

Tomatoes

Spring Gardening

It's that time of year again. Time to get the weeds out, the soil prepped and let the rototiller roll. We spent the last weekend, taking down all the stakes and old tomato and pepper stalks. Chores that should have done throughout the winter. The worst part for me was having to pick off all the dried up pole bean runners. Here's a few pictures of what our vegetable garden has looked like all winter. Too much snow throughout the winter and possibly, winter blues kept us from taking care of this when we should have. Two sore backs a week later, atleast it's ready to go as you will see in the final pictures.

The Lost and Forgotten Carrot

While tilling up our garden, we remembered that we did not finish digging up all our carrots. Life got busy, but that little carrot just kept growing and growing, determined to remind us that we left it all alone. This year we will have some help from some very good friends and they love carrots.

My Front Garden 2006

I was looking through my pictures in Picasa and came across more of my images of our front garden from last year. Picasa has been wonderful to work with. I love the organization capabilities of Picasa! Spring is just around the corner and I can't wait to get started in the garden again. Last year we installed an automatic drip system and it has been a lifesaver, giving more time to weed and feed and enjoy the flowers.