This week's challenge was super fun for me because I haven't shared my garden progress with everyone for a while, and this gives me the PERFECT opportunity to do so!
We planted these tomatoes in February- I think we have a total of 20 plants all together. They started off pretty teeny and I had no idea if they were actually going to fruit or not. After weeks of flowering, but not seeing any tomatoes on any plants save one cherry tomato plant, I was started to get a little worried. But now, all of a sudden in the last two weeks they have been EXPLODING with fruit! We bought some different varieties such as cherry tomatoes, Early Girls, Lemon Boys and yellow cherry tomatoes and it's crazy to see the differences in the sizes and shapes. This is one of our biggest tomatoes, which my mom planted under a pine tree just as an experiment. The pine tree tomatoes are doing even better than the garden bed tomatoes! All the plants have fluffed out and grown much taller it seems overnight, and we just added cages around all our tomatoes, some peppers, and our giant tomatillo plants (which have a TON of flowers, but no fruit yet) and it makes the garden look so official and not like we have no idea what we are doing. I have big big plans to can gallons of tomato sauce with these babies so we can have the freshest pasta and pizza sauce all year long.
Against our brick wall is our melon beds lines with Ornamental corn and sunflowers. If you look close you can see all the little yellow squash flowers waiting to turn into a squash bonanza. We're literally going to have squash coming out of our ears, so I'll keep everyone posted on when anyone can come and pick some out of the garden. We've planted all kinds of varieties- from crookneck yellow, to zuchinni, butternut, acorn, and this cute flat yellow peter pan squash.
And here is our Anaheim Chilis! I'm beyond excited to start roasting these for Green Chile Pork. It is the BEST. We planted all kinds of peppers in our Salsa Garden- Anaheim, Habanero, Cayenne, Serrano, Jalapenos, and Bells.
We have a giant square Sweet Corn Patch in the middle where we've companion planted with squash and beans. Here is where the butternut and acorn squash are, along with Soy Beans and Lima Beans. It's going to be fun once the corn gets tall to send the kids in to hunt for the squash and beans.
Last but not least, here is where our strawberry plants are. We planted Borage flowers around them because I read that borage protects the berries. Borage grows fast & furious providing lots of shade for the strawberries to protect from the impending heat, and while there are big bites out of the borage leaves from caterpillars we've found- all the strawberries are fully intact! We're plucking all the flowers off the strawberry plants this year to hopefully yield a bigger crop next year. We also have some humongous spinach growing beside the borage, so it's hard to see, but for reals- if ANYONE is wanting some free spinach, let me know. You can come grab as much as you need. There is no way we will be able to consume it all between two families.
I'll keep everyone updated on the garden progress next month, as for now here are the other ladies of Foto Friday's entries!
