Backyard Garden 2011

Last summer, Jessica, Rebecca, and I had an off-site garden. It was a huge project for beginners (especially since 2 of us were pregnant), but we had some help and it turned out really well. This year I decided to have a much smaller garden in my backyard. It has been harder to grow things, unfortunately, but it is much easier to manage.

Last year's garden - it felt like a whole farm sometimes


Digging out this year's garden - much smaller

I started a lot of seeds inside, but that ended up being a lot more trouble than it was worth. The day after I transplanted most of the plants outside, our crazy April storms hit. Almost everything either drowned or got smashed by hail. The things I started from seed outside have done MUCH better than my transplants. After the storms let up, something (I think a rabbit) ate all of my marigolds, some carrots, green onion, 2 tomato plants, 1 1/2 pepper plants, and snacked on my zucchini plant. Ugh! I put up some chicken wire and finally, I feel like my garden is beginning to grow. I just cut our third huge helping of lettuce and the lettuce plants are still so big! It's nice to be able to get something out of our hard work. I will be really excited when our squash, zucchini, and bell peppers begin to grow fruit. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll have any tomatoes this year, but I'm sure we will be able to bum some off of Jessica. :)






Our 3rd large helping of lettuce this month

Basil, parsley, marigolds, and carrots
in a pot on our patio

Our garden today (from left to right):

squash, zucchini, bell peppers, tomato, green onion, lettuce, carrots, and more lettuce
We also have a raspberry bush around the corner and
sunflowers at our gate entrance - all from seed.
This picture was taken after I cut that huge portion of lettuce,
and you can see we still have a lot -

I had no idea it would grow into so much!