After a successful first year of veggie growing, I decided to expand. Here are the pictures of this year so far. I'll try to keep up with posting more as the season goes on.
In the beginning, there was snow. So much snow. This winter was terrible. Here in the Metro-Detroit area we had our snowiest winter ever, and one of the coldest on record too. I took this picture back in December of 2013, and it didn't look any different in March.
After the thaw, the first sign of life in my garden was the garlic poking up.
I planted some lettuce and threw a row cover over the bed as soon as the soil could be worked.
A peek under the row cover a couple of weeks later.
Finally warm enough to remove the cover around mid-May.
Bonus lilac photo, because they never seem to bloom long enough.
Pre-Expansion on Memorial Day Weekend.
I bought a couple of cedar raised bed kits from Home Depot, one 8x4ft in the back and a 4x4 up front. They were really easy to put together, and the only drilling/screwing I had to do was to put the little caps on the corners. All of the plants in the beds I started myself indoors over the winter.
Cart with a couple of flats of annuals that got dispersed throughout the beds. I put them around the edges for a splash of color, and to help attract some pollinators. The mason bees love the Sweet Alyssum.
This is one of my favorite corners of my garden this year. I have winterbor kale, and Apollo carrots in the pots, and chocolate mint taking over everything around them. The chocolate mint smells phenomenal when you brush against it, and is super refreshing to munch on when working outside on hot sticky days.
Chives and marigolds.
Garlic scape!
Last weekend I installed trellis netting around all of the beds for the tomatoes, cucumbers, and zucchini. Doing the cucumbers vertically was very successful, and so far the tomatoes are doing exceptionally well on the trellis netting. I use the little round clips that you can get from Johnny's Seeds to secure them to the net.
Happy peppers.
And lastly, a happy dog.
