How Does Your Garden Grow?

First off, obviously not much is growing yet, but gardening season is in full swing around here. Seeds are sprouting in the “nursery” (our spare room), the garden is (mostly) prepared for planting, and fingers are itching to get into the soil.

It’s show and tell time, boys and girls!

At the front of the yard, the butterfly garden is taking shape. Yesterday I found an old pie plate (Pampered Chef – never could get the pies out of it even though I followed their instructions to the letter) for the butterfly “puddle”. It’s filled with sand and rocks, then watered.

Also up front, the lovage did survive! And it’s doing splendidly!

I’ll be getting out there today to dig up the hens and chicks; I was going to simply remove them but I’ve decided to spread them out at the front of the garden. Behind them, I’ll plant a generous row of marigolds.

At the back of the house, our little flower bed has become the salad garden.

In it is the garlic I planted last fall (to the far right), which is doing VERY well. At the back is another row of garlic that I rescued from the garden. Apparently, the neighbours don’t use much garlic (we do) and it wouldn’t have been used. I had John dig up two of the clumps and transplanted them here. Along with the garlic, there’s half a row of mixed salad greens, half a row of salad spinach, half a row of lettuce, half a row of green onions and a row of radishes, along with a row of marigolds along the front edge. Once the tulips have bloomed, the bulbs will be removed to another location.

Also, in that little garden is my row of sweet peas! I started them in the house and planted them yesterday. They’ve been living outside for the last couple of weeks so I feel quite confident they’ll do just fine and I’ll have a bunch of lovely, scented sweet peas to enjoy this summer.

And then there’s the garden. (Clicking on the picture will take you to the larger version). As you can see, it’s pretty much ready for planting. Our section is in the foreground, where you can see the rows laid out.

John has decided that we and S (the woman who lives upstairs) can plant some cucumbers on the pile in the center of the picture. That’s last year’s garden waste with a layer of soil over it. Cucumbers should do quite well. I wanted to put one (just one!) zucchini plant in there as well but John figures we’ll have plenty of offers for free zucchini. He might be right but I might just sneak one in there anyway.

These will be planted today, if all goes according to plan. I bought three varieties of potato: Bintje, Innovator, and French Fingerling potatoes. Clicking on each name will take you to a page describing that varietal. Potatoes are not high on the list of foods that I enjoy, but I’m hoping that these varieties will be more to my liking than most of the potatoes we normally eat. John is always amazed that though I’m of Dutch heritage, I don’t enjoy potatoes.

Ok, I think this is a long enough post for today. There’s more I could show you but that will be for another day. For now, I’m just going to do some dishes and tidying up while I wait for the day to warm up a little more and then I’ll be heading out into the garden again.