How Does Your Garden Grow?

For the past few years, we have planted a small, backyard garden and have had a little success. Mostly, it is a fun project that the kids like to help with and we might have a few things grow! This year, we decided to put a bit more planning and effort into the garden project and have had lots of success. We moved our sandbox to a new location in the backyard to give the garden a sunnier spot. Also, we decided to rent a plot in the new community garden to support the new venture sponsored by our garden club and to enjoy visiting with other gardeners. 

 At the end of April, we planted wildflower, squash and carrot seeds.

At home, we planted green onions, parsley, basil, strawberries, corn, cucumbers, green beans, watermelon, bell peppers, two kinds of tomatoes, lettuce and some more wildflowers.

 This is our backyard garden a few weeks later.

 At the end of May and beginning of June, Clara beams over the produce she's harvested: a couple of dinners worth of green beans, several cucumbers, green peppers and lots of cherry tomatoes!

 Here she is with her first strawberry!

 This picture was taken last week when we realized that our squash plants at the community garden have been very successful! We have since gathered a large bag of squash and have boiled it, put it on pizza, grated it to add to a frittata and eaten it raw!

 This is just some evidence that Benji cares for the garden, too. :)

He really loves pulling weeds (especially using the hoe) and watering.

 And, here's our backyard garden a few days ago. As you can see, it's a little out of hand! We are way behind on weeding and our large tomato plant (Park's Whopper) has completely taken down the stakes that are supposed to hold it up. We are still collecting produce on most plants and it has been so much fun! We cannot wait until the corn and watermelons are ready.

Here's the backyard flower garden with the mums and butterfly bush, surrounded by the wildflowers that Clara planted.