Progress

This is the time of year when you reap the rewards of hard work in the garden!

We used our first two bell peppers for fajitas last week.
 

The strawberries are taking off! We find lots of big juicy ones every day now.

Spiderman and Ella helped me plant some greens for fall harvest--spinach, lettuce mix, and swiss chard.

We ate our first garden carrot--there is nothing like a garden carrot. Well maybe a garden tomato.

We started harvesting our red potatoes. The kids think it is so cool to dig down and find them, and pop them out. They're like hidden treasure! I am sold on making room for them every year... they are so easy!

One of my favorite garden meals is fresh green beans and potatoes, boiled till tender, and mixed with white sauce and seasonings.

The corn is doing fine... just fine. Half of it was under watered so I pulled it up. It's so frustrating when things don't go as well as they did previous years. 

We picked all of our apples this week. They are a little tart, so I was waiting to see if they would ripen, and then all of a sudden they were dropping and getting soft, so I picked the rest. It's amazing that our tiny tree could make so many huge apples!

Speaking of fruit trees, we just acquired a cherry tree (Utah Giant) from a neighbor who was taking it out. It didn't much like getting transplanted, so we'll have to watch and see if it perks up. And we may need to buy a pollinator for it, but I figure it's worth a try to plant a free tree!

The pumpkins are struggling. The giant ones both died from squash bugs. This one is hanging on and developing a few fruits, but I am losing the war. I have killed thousands of squash bugs, not even kidding. Time for a new plan of attack.

So far the butternut squash hasn't been infested as much. They show signs of stress, and yet they are still growing huge vines and developing lots of fruit.

The first sunflower bloomed this morning! The kids have been watching anxiously and were so excited to spot it after swimming lessons. They are such happy flowers. 

Lastly, the tomatoes are taking off. The cherry tomato is sprawling and taking over the world, and the climbers are really progressing. I still don't have any red ones, but soon!

It's About Time...

I need to do better tracking the garden progress! I always look back to previous years and wonder why I didn't take more pictures. It's helpful to look back and see how big things were and what to expect year to year.

I am tickled to say this is the best luck I've ever had with broccoli and spinach! Both are producing bumper crops. It about broke my heart to thin the broccoli, and it's still about twice as thick as it should be. I have been picking gallon ziplocs of spinach and washing and freezing them for smoothies. And I can't keep up!

The rainbow carrots, beets and two rows of bush beans are on their way.
 

My indoor planting of tomato seeds wasn't very fruitful, and I talked to a lady who just plants seeds in the ground in May, so I thought I'd try it! Tomatoes grow so fast anyway, what's a couple weeks head start? The left row is an indeterminate variety that I hope to stake, and the right row varies more, with two cherry tomatoes and a Roma I got from my neighbor, and a bush variety from seed. 

We planted three types of pumpkins this year, and I'm always amazed that the plant itself is an indicator of fruit size--small, medium, and large! The far mound is an heirloom carving variety, the middle a 200 pounder, and the close a 1000 pounder! We planted them outside the garden in a large flower bed area, and we'll let them just go wherever they want. Should be interesting to watch and see!

We put our giant sunflowers on the opposite side of the garden this, closer to the front of our house. It will be fun to see them more as we come and go. Behind them you can kind of see the zucchini mounds (I have 5 growing right now and I need to pull a few or I'll be kicking myself!) and a whole row of butternut squash.

The peas are flowering and turning to pods. We squealed with delight when we spotted all those sweet peas growing!

The kale is out of control, and I love it! We have used it in smoothies, salads, and today we made a batch of kale chips that got scarfed in a matter of minutes. Requests are in for more tomorrow.

At the top of this picture are the 6 red potato plants that are doing fabulously well! In the same row are four bell peppers and an Anaheim from Peggy. Down the middle of the picture is the melon row, with watermelons at the top and cantaloupes at the bottom. This is the best start to melons we've ever had, so we're excited!

Not everything is doing well, though. My cucumbers never came up from seed, and I almost gave up on the onions, but now I see about 7 or 8 that might make it. I'll need to separate them soon so they can start to bulb out, so we'll see how that goes.  
 

The corn experiment is on! I planted each row a week apart to extend our harvest. Hopefully it helps!

The view of the whole thing from the corn side. I'm pretty happy with it overall this year. Let the fun begin! As I've been writing this, I've realized just how much produce I'm going to have on my hands in a few months!

My favorite thing is when my kids stay nearby and help. Ella takes the most interest right now and knows what everything is and how it's doing. Tonight she caught a butterfly and a ladybug. Jake pulled some lettuce for me (so helpful) and they all gathered strawberries and helped me eat them. Yum!

Morning Snack

We are loving the fruit growing in our own back yard. The strawberries are taking off (if we can keep the kids from picking them too early)! The nectarines weren't properly thinned so they are tiny, but they are super sweet and juicy! We go back there almost every day and help ourselves to a yummy snack.

Bloom Time

Everything is beginning to bloom!

The strawberries are starting to produce. If I remember right, I am not supposed the let them until they grow more vegetation, but I forget and then we find ruby red gems.

The green beans are flowering, which means we'll be eating them soon!

I had never really thought about it, but broccoli is the flower of the plant.

The cantaloupe is flowering, and I can't wait for some melons!

Outside the garden the colors are picking up too. The phlox is in full bloom. 

I have never seen my sedum bloom, which means it is happy where it is now!

The daylilies are in full flower production. The name is very literal... each lily is only good for one day.

My hosta sent up buds and will bloom this week.

And my lime green hydrangea is just about to burst. So exciting!

Strawberry Patch

This was the year to start our strawberry patch! I have been wanting to do this for ages, but the timing was never right. A friend of mine gave me her family's inside information on strawberries from a guru named E. Gordon Wells, Jr.

He suggests planting them in early April, and the variety he likes best is Albion, and ever bearing variety that produces first in the spring and latest in the fall. He says it produces large berries abundantly, instead of small berries with lots of seeds. We went on a field trip to Cooks Greenhouse in Orem to find them. 

They had them in flats, but the nice guy at Cooks gave me a little lesson in bare root strawberries and suggested I buy them 25 bare roots per pot, which is much more cost effective.

The wagons were so fun. That place is a gardener's paradise! Everything in the greenhouses is already blooming and just tempting you to bring something home. We spent a good hour wandering and admiring.

They don't look like much, but each pot really did have 25 baby bare root strawberries banded together. 

We weeded and prepared our plot under the fruit trees. The soil was amended last year with some mink manure, so we didn't add anything this year. Mr. Wells suggests adding peat moss and sulfur, but the Cook's guy told me to try what we've got and if the strawberries start turning yellow, we can always add sulfur or ammonium sulfate later. We have yet to get drip lines to each plant, so for now we are hand watering.

Sometimes gardening makes me nervous because you spend a lot of money on the front end, and just hope and pray that things are "fruitful"! But spring is full of promise.... we shall see!

Love grows on

Let me tell you the story of a strawberry plant.

This little transplant is the sole inhabitant of my west garden bed. It was introduced about two weeks ago, after a visit to Mike's Grandma Johnson. She is the most upbeat, adorable, sweet ninety-five year-old I know (don't mind that I don't know very many). Unfortunately she is sick from liver failure, but during our visit her concern was only for us. She knows how much Maddie loves to eat the strawberries in her back yard, so she insisted we bring some plants home with us.

This is Maddie a year ago, with strawberry juice dripping between her fingers in Grandma's back yard. Grandpa Andrews had a hard time keeping up with her demand for the juicy morsels.

{Grandma Johnson with her newest great-grand-daughter Ella}

It's amazing how love can live on through plants. Just as we will always think of Grandma Johnson when we eat strawberries, I will always think of my Grandma Jensen when I see the ivy on my parents house.

{My Grandma Jensen, holding me (blue) and my twin sister Dana}

When I was 12 years old, my mom helped me transplant some ivy slips from my Grandma to our house for a summer 4-H project. What began as tiny little plants now cover the entire east side of the house and try to sneak in through the roof and garage (in fact, my dad is getting tired of it invading and threatens to get rid of it!). It was my first official gardening experience, although my love for all things green began much earlier. My mom always named the wildflowers on hikes, picked bouquets of tulips and peonies from her beds in the spring, and grew gorgeous roses all summer long. Let's just say she planted a seed... and on it grows.