My beginning garden 2014

Cabbage, lettuce, broccoli, lavender

I think I have gotten almost everything into my garden that's going in. Here you see, arranged prettily (I really don't especially like regimented rows) some Bibb lettuce in the middle, with broccoli on the right and red cabbage on the left. I hope I left enough room between each one, as I remember last year's cabbage grew to massive proportions.

Looking to the north at my 7' x 23' plot

Here's another shot of my plot, with strawberries on the right near the fence, and some sugar snap peas hopefully willing to climb up those little sticks until they get to the fence itself. You can see the plot to my left has not yet begun to be cleared for planting. I'm so glad I didn't wait until MY plot was that overgrown before getting started.

Looking south at the other end of my plot

See all that greenery in the middle? Well, that's borage that has replanted itself from the flowers. I've learned that at this stage, borage leaves are tasty and nutritious. Want to see what the borage flower looks like? Take a look at this post from last June. One of the best parts about a blog is the ability to go back a year, two years, and look at the progress I've made in the garden, and have the ability to compare my activities as well. Past the borage you can see my little beet starts coming up, and some more salad greens. Here's a closeup.

Beets in the middle, salad greens on the left, and flowers

I also put in some sweet pea flowers and one double hollyhock, which you can see on either side of the veggies. I'm not sure why I did that, but I suspect they will look good in a month or two. I just wanted some pretty flowers, although in the middle of that borage (and here in front of the hollyhock), I have some volunteer nasturtiums that will add color as well.

The community garden, looking east to west

We have ten separate plots and a community garden in the middle between them, five on a side. We've got onions, sage, mint, currants and strawberries that came back from last year, but it's been a struggle to get the rest cleared out. At the back of this plot we found some poison hemlock that was coming up and had to be removed. I just put a yellow and a green zucchini squash plant in the middle of this area, which will probably take up the rest of the room we have in there. Those two plants will feed all of us, I suspect, this summer.

It's a lot of work to garden, but it's also very satisfying to get my hands down in the dirt and to rip out those pesky buttercups. All the plots are in use except for one, which I think we will clear out and maybe plant some pumpkins or whatnot. For now, we've got a good start on the season!
:-)